0
University of California • Berkeley
REGIONAL ORAL HISTORY OFFICE
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
ITALIAN SWISS COLONY, 1949-1989:
RECOLLECTIONS OF A THIRD -GENERATION CALIFORNIA WINEMAKER
With an Introduction by
A. Dinsmoor Webb
An Interview Conducted by
Ruth Teiser
and
Lisa Jacobson
in 1988, 1989
Copyright (c) 1990 by The Regents of the University of California
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing
leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the
development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is
a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed
interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed,
lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee.
The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with
photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at
the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for
scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended
to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a
spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as
such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal
agreement between the University of California and
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr. dated June 26, 1989. The
manuscript is thereby made available for research
purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California,
Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for
publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720,
and should include identification of the specific
passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages,
and identification of the user. The legal agreement
with Edmund A. Rossi, Jr. requires that he be notified
of the request and allowed thirty days in which to
respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as
follows :
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr. , "Italian Swiss
Colony, 1949-1988: Recollections of a
Third-Generation California Wnemaker,"
an oral history conducted in 1988, 1989
by Ruth Teiser and Lisa Jacobson,
Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1990.
Copy no.
EDMUND A. ROSSI, JR.
1983
Cataloging Information
ROSSI, Edmund A., Jr. [1924]
Winemaker
Italian Swiss Colony. 1949-1989: Recollections of a Third-
Generation California Winemaker. 1990, 148 pp.
Three generations of Rossi family winemakers; winery at Asti,
California; various owners of Italian Swiss Colony; flavored wines;
influence of Louis Petri; winery personnel; brandy and high-proof
wines; research and development of products; international
investigations for Heublein; professional organizations and
research papers; modern advances in the vineyard and the winery.
Introduction by A. Dinsmoor Webb, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus,
Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California,
Davis.
Interviewed in 1988 by Ruth Teiser for the Wine Spectator
California Winemen Series. The Regional Oral History, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1996
A20 San ^Francisco (Lljruim Ir
OBITUARIES
Edmund A. Rossi Jr.
Funeral services will be held to
morrow for Edmund A. Rossi Jr., a
member of one of California's
most famous wine families.
Mr. Rossi died Monday at a rest
home in Oakland of complications
brought on by a major stroke in
1992. He was 72.
A grandson of pioneer wine-
maker Pietro Rossi, he spent a long
career with Italian Swiss Colony
after graduate studies in enology
at the University of California at
Davis.
Mr. Rossi was an expert on re
search and product development
and a former president of the
American Society for Enology and
Viticulture. He served as vice pres
ident in charge of quality control
for Italian Swiss Colony, which
was acquired by Beringer Vine
yards in 1988.
He was a native San Franciscan
who attended St. Ignatius High
School and the University of San
Francisco. His college years were
interrupted by service in the Navy
during World War n.
A widower, Mr. Rossi is surviv
ed by three children, Christine of
Denver, Therese of San Diego and
Brandt of Alameda; a sister,
Yvonne Rossi Dolan of Oakland;
and two grandsons.
The funeral will be at 9:30 a.m.
at St. Ignatius Church at Parker
and Fulton streets in San Francis
co, with burial in Holy Cross Ceme
tery.
TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
PREFACE i
INTRODUCTION, by A. Dinsmoor Webb v
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ROSSI FAMILY, by Leon D. Adams vii
INTERVIEW HISTORY viii
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY ix
Childhood and Education 1
The Rossi Family and Its Associates 3
Early Experience with Wine 10
The Winery at Asti 11
The Sale to National Distillers, 1942 13
Working for National Distillers, 1949-1953 17
The Many Owners of Italian Swiss Colony 26
Flavored Wines 30
Practical Projects with Elbert M. Brown 32
Louis Petri Buys Italian Swiss Colony, 1953 34
Developing Wines 41
Post -Repeal Generic Wines 47
Wines of 1950-1969 52
Flavored Wines of 1968-1983 62
Traditional and Innovative Wines of 1968-1983 69
Soft Wines 72
The Petri Period, Continued: 1953-1960 76
Quality Control 81
Petri Personnel 84
Plant Personnel 86
Brandy and High -Proof 93
More on the Petri Period 97
Inglenook 98
The Heublein Period, 1969-1983 101
The Colony Label 109
Research and Development 112
International Investigations for Heublein 116
ISC Sale to Allied, 1983 119
ISC Sale to ERLY Industries, 1987 [?] 122
Distinctions of Italian Swiss Colony 125
Responsibilities Since 1983 130
The Beverage Source, 1988 131
Industry Organizations and Research Papers 133
Advances in the Vineyard and the Winery 139
Awards 143
TAPE GUIDE 146
APPENDIX I -- Letter from Edmund Rossi, Sr. 148
APPENDIX II -- "A Historical Perspective,"
by Edmund Rossi, Jr. 150
APPENDIX III -- List of Chairmen of Technical Advisory
Committee 178
INDEX 179
PREFACE
The California wine industry oral history series, a project of the
Regional Oral History Office, was initiated in 1969 through the action
and with the financing of the Wine Advisory Board, a state marketing
order organization which ceased operation in 1975. In 1983 it was
reinstituted as The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series
with donations from The Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. The
selection of those to be interviewed is made by a committee consisting of
James D. Hart, director of The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley; John A. De Luca, president of the Wine Institute,
the statewide winery organization; Maynard A. Amerine, Emeritus Professor
of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis; the current
chairman of the board of directors of the Wine Institute; Ruth Teiser,
series project director; and Marvin R. Shanken, trustee of The Wine
Spectator Scholarship Foundation.
The purpose of the series is to record and preserve information on
California grape growing and wine making that has existed only in the
memories of wine men. In some cases their recollections go back to the
early years of this century, before Prohibition. These recollections are
of particular value because the Prohibition period saw the disruption of
not only the industry itself but also the orderly recording and
preservation of records of its activities. Little has been written about
the industry from late in the last century until Repeal. There is a real
paucity of information on the Prohibition years (1920-1933), although
some commercial wine making did continue under supervision of the
Prohibition Department. The material in this series on that period, as
well as the discussion of the remarkable development of the wine industry
in subsequent years (as yet treated analytically in few writings) will be
of aid to historians. Of particular value is the fact that frequently
several individuals have discussed the same subjects and events or
expressed opinions on the same ideas, each from his own point of view.
Research underlying the interviews has been conducted principally in
the University libraries at Berkeley and Davis, the California State
Library, and in the library of the Wine Institute, which has made its
collection of in many cases unique materials readily available for the
purpose .
ii
The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record
autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed
significantly to recent California history. The office is headed by
Willa K. Baum and is under the administrative supervision of James D.
Hart, the director of The Bancroft Library.
Ruth Teiser
Project Director
The Wine Spectator California Winemen
Oral History Series
September 1990
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
iii
CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS
Interviews Completed by 1990
Leon D. Adams, Revitalizing the California Wine Industry. 1974
Leon D. Adams, California Wine Industry Affairs: Recollections and Opinions.
1990
Maynard A. Amerine, The University of California and the State's Wine
Industry. 1971
Maynard A. Amerine, Wine Bibliographies and Taste Perception Studies. 1988
Philo Biane, Wine Making in Southern California and Recollections of Fruit
Industries . Inc . . 1972
John B. Cella, The Cella Family in the California Wine Industry. 1986
Charles Crawford, Recollections of a Career with the Gallo Winery and the
Development of the California Wine Industry, 1942-1989. 1990
Burke H. Critchfield, Carl F. Wente, and Andrew G. Frericks, The California
Wine Industry During the Depression. 1972
William V. Cruess, A Half Century of Food and Wine Technology. 1967
Jack and Jamie Peterman Davies , Rebuilding Schramsberg: The Creation of a
California Champagne House. 1990
William A. Dieppe, Almaden is Mv Life. 1985
Alfred Fromm, Marketing California Wine and Brandy. 1984
Louis Gomberg, Analytical Perspectives on the California Wine Industry. 1935-
1990. 1990
Joseph E. Heitz, Creating a Winery in the Napa Valley. 1986
Maynard A. Joslyn, A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry. 1974
Amandus N. Kasimatis, A Career in California Viticulture. 1988
Morris Katz , Paul Masson Winery Operations and Management. 1944-1988. 1990
Legh F. Knowles, Jr., Beaulieu Vineyards from Family to Corporate Ownership.
1990
Horace 0. Lanza and Harry Baccigaluppi, California Grape Products and Other
Wine Enterprises. 1971
Louis M. Martini and Louis P. Martini, Wine Making in the Napa Valley. 1973
Louis P. Martini, A Family Winery and the California Wine Industry. 1984
iv
Eleanor McCrea, Stony Hill Vineyards: The Creation of a Napa Valley Estate
Winery. 1990
Otto E. Meyer, California Premium Wines and Brandy. 1973
Norbert C. Mirassou and Edmund A. Mlrassou, The Evolution of a Santa Clara
Valley Winery. 1986
Peter Mondavi, Advances in Technology and Production at Charles Krug Winery.
1946-1988. 1990
Robert Mondavi, Creativity in the Wine Industry. 1985
Michael Moone, Management and Marketing at Beringer Vineyards and Wine World.
Inc. . 1990
Myron S. Nightingale, Making Wine in California. 1944-1987. 1988
Harold P. Olmo, Plant Genetics and New Grape Varieties. 1976
Cornelius Ough, Researches of an Enoloeist . University of California. Davis.
1950-1990. 1990
Antonio Perelli-Minetti, A Life in Wine Making. 1975
Louis A. Petri, The Petri Family in the Wine Industry. 1971
Jefferson E. Peyser, The Lav and the California Wine Industry. 1974
Lucius Powers, The Fresno Area and the California Wine Industry. 1974
Victor Repetto and Sydney J. Block, Perspectives on California Wines. 1976
Edmund A. Rossi, Italian Swiss Colony and the Wine Industry. 1971
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., Italian Swiss Colony. 1949-1989: Recollections of a
Third-Generation California Winemaker. 1990
Arpaxat Setrakian, A. Setrakian. a Leader of the San Joaquin Valley Grape
Industry. 1977
Elie Skofis, California Wine and Brandy Maker. 1988
Andre Tchelistcheff , Grapes. Wine, and Ecology. 1983
Brother Timothy, The Christian Brothers as Wine Makers. 1974
Ernest A. Wente, Wine Making in the Livermore Valley. 1971
Albert J. Winkler, Viticultural Research at UC Davis (1921-1971). 1973
INTRODUCTION -- Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
The first, 1887, vintage in the newly constructed winery at Asti
was a sad disappointment, more nearly resembling vinegar than
drinkable table wine. This led Andrea Sbarboro to recruit his San
Francisco druggist friend, Pietro C. Rossi, for help in the
winemaking. Rossi, a graduate pharmacist of the Univerity of Torino,
understood the basic biochemistry of fermentation. Sbarboro had tried
to develop the Italian Swiss Colony as a cooperative in which members
were compensated with room, board, wine, and a basic wage, part of
which was withheld for purchase of vineyard land. Worker reluctance
to agree to the twenty-five year contract prompted Sbarboro to
organize instead as a private vineyard and winery venture. Pietro
Rossi was soon one of the managing partners in the company. Killed in
a horse and buggy accident in 1911, Pietro left his twin sons, Edmund
and Robert, who continued management of the technical side of the
buisiness when the Italian Swiss Colony was taken over by the
California Wine Association in 1913. Edmund and Robert correctly
foresaw the failure of the prohibition experiment, and with the
cooperation of the former vineyard manager at Asti, Enrico Prati,
bought the property from California Wine Association. They supplied
home winemakers with grapes, juice, or grape concentrate for home wine
production. It was during this phase of the Italian Swiss Colony
story that the donor of this oral history, Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., made
his appearance.
Although it is possible that I met Ed Rossi, Jr., in 1941 or 1942
on the campus of the University at Davis, or at one of the various
wine technicians' meetings, by late 1948 or early 1949 we had
established a friendship developed from the new professor-graduate
student relationship at Davis. We continued the friendship when Ed
started working for Italian Swiss Colony. Ed apparently felt a need
to discuss production problems, and initiated a long series of
telephone conferences to this end. I enjoyed talking with Ed because
he frequently presented problems the solutions of which led to
fundamental discoveries in wine chemistry as well as to an answer to a
practical problem in the operating winery. I also became acquainted
with Ed Rossi, Jr.'s father, the late Edmund A. Rossi, who as manager
of the Wine Advisory Board was the person to whom I reported on the
research they sponsored in the University of California.
vi
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Ed., Jr., and I met and
worked together on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Wine
Institute, the American Society for Enology and Viticulture, and the
Wine Industry Technical Symposium. Invariably reserved and courteous,
Ed was nevertheless a productive worker on committees, frequently
smoothing rough spots in discussions. His ability to suggest
compromises between opposing positions often led to group conclusions
facilitating quality advances of California wines.
With the many changes in ownership of Italian Swiss Colony, Ed's
positions, titles, and responsibilities changed, with the result that
our close cooperation of earlier years became less frequent. In
essence, contacts were reduced to brief personal exchanges at the
annual meetings of the various grape and wine organizations of
California. You may imagine my pleasure and surprise one late summer
morning in the mid eighties, in Verona, to see Ed come into the lobby
of the Due Torre Hotel. As my Italian host arrived at about the same
time, I introduced the two gentlemen. I couldn't help being impressed
again with Ed's quiet and courteous response, delivered in flawless
(to my ear) Italian.
The most recent owner of Italian Swiss Colony, the Beverage
Source, has sold the winery at Asti and is apparently leaving the wine
business. This change leaves Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., consulting for
Heublein, one of the earlier owners of the winery. What of the future
of the winery at Asti? Desirable from the romantic traditional
viewpoint, the fact is that the entire establishment, which was built
to the standards of the 1880s, is not designed to make the finer wines
of today in an efficient manner. Perhaps it is appropriate that as
this winery fades away, the grandson of one of its founders carries on
in the field of grapes and wines.
A. Dinsmoor Webb, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Enology
University of California
Davis, California
22 March 1990
vii
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ROSSI FAMILY
•
Edmund A. Rossi and Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., represent both
lifelong wine careers and lifelong devotion to the cause of California
wine.
The father carried high ideals and practices from his boyhood before
Prohibition, becoming president of the once-great Italian Swiss Colony
winery and vineyards at Asti in northern Sonoma County. There in the
1880s his father, former San Francisco druggist Pietro C. Rossi, had
produced the Italian Swiss Colony's first successful wines.
Edmund Rossi, Junior, after studying viticulture and enology at the
University of California at Davis, joined his father, who since the
repeal of Prohibition had become president of the Italian Swiss Colony
and presided at the Colony's San Francisco headquarters on Beach Street.
Edmund Junior's job there was to protect the quality of the Colony's bulk
wines, then being shipped to the national wine trade. Quality
consultation continued as Edmund Junior's principal responsibility in
later years at the onetime Mission Bell winery near Madera. Still later
it extended to a winery in Portugal.
It was about 1948 that I was successful in persuading Edmund Rossi,
Senior, who by then had been retired from the Italian Swiss Colony, to
accept the managership of the Wine Advisory Board at San Francisco,
supervising the nationwide wine educational program then being conducted
by the Board for the entire California grape and wine industry. He
continued in that capacity until 1960.
Edmund Rossi, Junior, in the 1980s was recalled to the Italian Swiss
Colony winery at Asti to accept a new challenge- -to create a new premium-
quality California wine brand of varietal California table wines to
restore the Colony's quality reputation. The name selected was that of
the Colony's founder in 1880--San Francisco grocer-banker-philanthropist
Andrea Sbarboro.
The first Sbarboro Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon produced by
Edmund Rossi, Junior, at Asti delighted the nation's connoisseurs. But
in the meanwhile, the entire Colony property at Asti was being sold to an
entirely new owner. Edmund, Junior, returned to Madera and to his
present endeavors of improving grapes and wines in Portugal and southern
France .
Leon D . Adams
Mill Valley, California
March 1990
vili
INTERVIEW HISTORY -- Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
•
Edmund A. Rossi and Edmund A. Rossi, Jr. , represent two
generations of a highly respected three-generation California wine
industry family. The welcome task of interviewing both fell to me.
That with Edmund A. Rossi, Sr. , whose career was in both the industry
and the industry organization, the Wine Advisory Board, was completed
in 1971. Presented here is the interview with Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.,
whose career has been entirely with the organization, in all its
mutations, that descended from the Italian Swiss Colony winery.
Through the years, under the various ownerships, the original
Italian Swiss Colony property at Asti, California, had been maintained
and used. At one time its lively tasting room was one of Northern
California's leading tourist attractions. Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.'s work
was done here and at the other installations affiliated with it, as he
discusses in this interview.
The initial sessions of the interview, in which Lisa Jacobson
participated, were held in Mr. Rossi's office at Asti shortly before
the last company that held it sold the premises to another wine
organization, which has ceased maintaining it as a separate entity.
They were held on February 22, 23, and 24, March 7, 8, and 9, and
April 4, 1988. Mr. Rossi brought notes, having frequently between
sessions reviewed records.
After the transcript was sent to him, he reviewed it carefully,
checking many points and making minor corrections, and making notes on
additions. He wanted to make some clarifications, and especially he
wanted to include the names of those who had worked constructively
with him over the years. On June 7 and 8, 1989, in the conference
room at a Heublein installation outside of Madera, his headquarters,
he and I went over the changes and additions to work them into the
transcript. The result is a highly informative account of many
aspects of the California wine industry, its nuts and bolts as well as
its larger issues, from the point of view of a remarkably steady
contributor to that industry.
Ruth Teiser
Interview/Editor
July 1990
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
Regional Oral discory uiiice un^cj.^,.,. >.*. ^.u.^.^.. ^.
Room 486 The Bancroft Library ix Berkeley, California 94720
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
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Childhood and Education
[Interview Ij 22 February 1988 (re-recorded 4 April 1988 due to
machine failure the first time)], Asti, California////^
Teiser: Where and when were you born?
Rossi: I was born in San Francisco on December 17, 1924, and I spent my
childhood days in San Francisco. I went to a grammar school run
by French -Canadian sisters, Notre Dame des Victoires on Pine
Street between Grant Avenue and Stockton. The idea was that I
could learn a little French, which I did. Then when I graduated
from there I went to St. Ignatius High School between 1938 and
1942.
Teiser: What part of the city did you live in as a child?
Rossi: I lived at 3445 Jackson Street, which is between Laurel and
Locust Streets, in the Park Presidio District. That's the only
home I remember, but I'm not sure when my father built the home.
Teiser: Was it built before you were born?
Rossi: I think it may have been built after I was born. In fact, the
architect for the home was Remo Sbarboro, one of the three sons
of Andrea Sbarboro. The other two sons were Romolo and Alfred,
who were associated with the Bank of America.
Getting back to St. Ignatius High School, I had no sooner
graduated from there than I started at the University of San
Francisco in the Fall of 1942. I enlisted in the Navy in
December 1942 for the V-12 program. It was a program for deck
officers in the Navy.
This symbol (//#) indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun
or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see page 146.
I reported for duty in June, 1943, to Gonzaga University in
Spokane, Washington. I was there for university training from
1943 to 1944 before I went on to a midshipman's school, and then
ultimately was commissioned.
Teiser: What was your rank?
Rossi: I was commissioned an ensign and retired an ensign. The truth
is, I received my commission in the summer of 1945, and, as I
recall, V-J Day was August, 1945. So I missed the fireworks.
But I did go out to the Pacific and served on a small anti
submarine ship, USS PCE 875 out of the Philippines. It was a
good experience, actually; I enjoyed it.
When I returned from the Navy I went back to the University
of San Francisco and finished there in 1947. During 1948 I went
to the University of California at Davis and took all the
viticulture and enology courses without trying to get a Master's
degree. A Master's degree would have entailed my going back and
getting many more basic courses in either Pomology or Food
Science. At that point I felt I was twenty- five years old and
should get started in the business world, so I simply didn't take
the time to get a Master's degree. Actually, if I had had time
more on my side, or if I had wanted to take the time, I think I
would have gone back and taken a Master's degree in Business
Administration. I've always felt that to be a good combination
with the scientific training.
Teiser: Didn't you wait until [Maynard A.] Amerine was there?
Rossi: Yes. I came back from the Navy in 1946 and actually finished my
degree at the University of San Francisco in the summer of 1947.
In the Fall of 1947, Amerine wasn't there, so I took some post
graduate business courses there for the balance of 1947. In 1948
I was able to take all of the enology and viticulture courses,
including those which Maynard taught in 1948. I waited six
months so I could specifically have him teach the enology
courses .
Teiser: Who else did you study with then?
Rossi: I studied with Dr. [Albert J.] Winkler. He had a dry sense of
humor. He was told I was from San Francisco the first day of
class, and he handed me a pair of pruning shears and said,
"Rossi, this is the handle; the other end is the cutting edge."
[laughter] I still tease him about that, and he still laughs.
It was good for a laugh then, and it's still good for a laugh
now.
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi :
Then I studied with Dr. [John G.] Castor in microbiology and
yeast. He was very good in microbiology. I also studied with
Jim [James F. ] Guymon on distillation and other engineering
operations.
Were you interested in distillation at that time?
Yes, I found it interesting. It was an interesting course. I've
always felt it would have been good to get into pot
distillations, the way they do it in Europe, which is what
they're beginning to get involved in now [here] --Jack Davies--
He's out of it now, but he was in a venture with Remy Martin.
Miles Karakasevic, who used to work for us at Escalon, I think
still has a pot still up here in Mendocino someplace.
Yes. Another fellow named Ansley Cole, Jr., has a pot still near
Ukiah, too, and there are several at Guild.
Oh, Elie Skofis [of Guild] . I knew Elie was always involved and
interested. He and Bob [Robert M. ] Ivie and Guymon went to
Europe on at least one occasion to view brandy making firsthand.
What was your training as an undergraduate?
Chemistry.
Did you always expect to be in the wine industry?
gave
And
No, for the first few years, when I was taking chemistry, I
a thought to being a doctor and going into the medical
profession. Then I decided against that, and the next most
promising thing seemed to me to get into the wine business.
so I did. With an undergraduate degree in chemistry it was a
very good support for me to have going into enology. Actually, I
believe I realized more chemistry than would otherwise have been
required.
The Rossi Family and Its Associates
Teiser: You had a very strong wine tradition, certainly, from your father
and your grandfather. What do you know of your grandfather from
family tradition? How would you describe him--Pietro C. Rossi?
Rossi: He died in 1911, and I didn't make my appearance until 1924, so
there was a thirteen-year span. But from what I have heard
others say, he was a very gentle person and quite a religious
person, and treated people fairly. As I recall, there was a
story of when he was in the cellar and somebody pumped wine into
two tanks which were dry and so were not ready to hold wine, and
consequently they lost a considerable amount of wine. My
grandfather, instead of just blowing up over the matter, went up
to the man and said, "You've made a mistake, you realize that? I
expect it won't happen again," without losing his cool. That
seemed to be the way he was .
In 1906 , after the fire , when they had the winery in San
Francisco, there was a considerable inventory of wine,
apparently. They were able to preserve the wine through the
fire, and I recall my father telling me that they did not
increase the price of wine in virtue of a natural disaster. They
felt that it wasn't right for them to take advantage of others
who had lost their wine, when they had been spared their wine--
actually, after a lot of pleading with army engineers not to blow
up the building.
Teiser: Where was the winery?
Rossi: It was at Battery and Greenwich Streets.
I have a little historical document that my father wrote
that is kind of interesting.
Teiser: Was your grandfather tall?
Rossi: I don't think he was exceptionally tall. For some reason I
visualize him as being maybe five-feet-ten; I don't think he was
six feet tall. You often see him next to Mr. Sbarboro, and I
think Mr. Sbarboro was exceptionally short, so that may have made
him look tall in stature. Maybe they didn't drink as much milk
in those days; I don't know.
Teiser: I found in The Bancroft Library a letter your grandfather had
written suggesting that American wine be served to American Navy
people, or at Navy banquets. It made him a very strong American
Italian, expressing great patriotism. It was to Frederick
Taggert, who was in the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
•See Appendix I .
Rossi: [reads it] That's the first time I've seen this letter. It's
interesting that the tone of the letter is not for them to serve
exclusively Italian Swiss Colony; he'd like for them to serve
Italian Swiss Colony, but if they didn't, at least serve a
California wine in preference to other wines. Which is a good
spirit.
Teiser: The other item I have is an 1895 bill.
Rossi: Oh, for goodness' sakes. [reads it] Fourteen cases of Zinfandel
for forty -six dollars! That's quite a bargain by today's
standards .
Teiser: Continuing to trace the wine tradition in your family, your
father [Edmund A. Rossi] was in the wine industry throughout his
life, was he not?
Rossi: Yes. He went to St. Ignatius College, which is the same as the
University of San Francisco today. Then I believe he spent a
year with Professor [Frederic T.] Bioletti at the University of
California in Berkeley. (When I speak of my father, I'm speaking
also of his twin brother, Robert [D.]; they were very close, and
certainly their educational backgrounds and business careers
paralleled one another's very, very closely.) Anyway, they went
to the University of San Francisco, graduated. I think in those
days they had more of a liberal arts degree, and then he went on
to take the scientific winemaking course from the University of
California at Berkeley.
They finished their studies in 1909. Then they went to
Europe shortly thereafter with my grandfather to tour some of the
winemaking regions of Europe. As a matter of fact, they found a
type of fermenting tank in use in Northern Algeria which provided
for automatic infusion of the fermenting red juice over the
pomace to extract color. This system was adapted at Asti. They
also learned of the use of a material called sulfur dioxide,
which turned out to be quite an asset, when used in proper
amounts , for making wine .
My father and uncle were hardly in the business before my
grandfather died, in 1911. That was a terrible tragedy and an
enormous shock to the family with ten children. So in virtue of
that, it was shortly thereafter that, in 1915, they sold their
share in Italian Swiss Colony to California Wine Association,
first half interest was sold in 1901, the second in 1911, although
it was not announced until later.
and then both Bob and Ed worked for California Wine Association
for several years. My father was here at Asti as superintendent
of the plant, and Robert was in charge of the San Francisco
operation. Robert was absent for Army duty during the First
World War.
In any case, in 1920 they formed a company- -this was after
the start of Prohibition- -that was called the Asti Grape Products
Company, which sold grapes and concentrate for home winemaking or
for juices. They survived through Prohibition in that way. Of
course, it was not just themselves: there was Enrico Prati, who
was a partner of theirs through their business life; and then the
Seghesios had an interest in the company. From my father's
recollection, the initial capital was $240,000. Their assets
were the vineyards and the winery at Asti. In 1924 they received
from California Wine Association the right to use the Italian
Swiss Colony brands. The Seghesios sold their interest in 1933
to a gentleman by the name of A. J. Merle.
Teiser: So there was continuity, really, at least in grape products and
vineyards?
Rossi: Oh, yes. Following Prohibition, during which Mr. Andrea Sbarboro
had died (in 1923), his son, Alfred Sbarboro, stayed in touch
with the company. The Sbarboros made an investment in the
Italian Swiss Colony in the 1930s and, as a vice president of the
Bank of America, Alfred had an interest as a banker in the
Italian Swiss Colony. On Alfred's retirement from the bank in
the 1940s, he joined the executive staff at Italian Swiss Colony.
At the same time there was a man by the name of Bartolomeo
Coppo, who was one of the first cellarmasters at the winery here,
who was a very devoted and loyal employee for many, many years.
Two of his sons, Joe and Louis, devoted their working lives
largely to Italian Swiss Colony.
Teiser: Was Bartolomeo a particularly talented man?
Rossi: He was an intelligent person. His son Joe tells me he went to
England from Italy to learn something about the selling of wine.
Apparently they owned their own winery in Italy, and so he came
here to the United States with some experience. He was a good
taster. I remember him. He and Enrico Prati really made the
blends. And he was the type of person who, just in
deference to my father, when I took an interest in winemaking,
was most helpful to me.
Teiser: What kind of a person was Enrico Prati?
Rossi: Enrico Prati was a very dynamic person. He was hard- driving, and
I would say, having emigrated from Italy with little of anything,
he really started from scratch and had to work very hard to
accomplish what he was able to do in his lifetime. From his
start in 1909 he was associated with the vineyard, so he knew the
vineyard operation. Then in 1920, after the formation of Asti
Grape Products Company, he took charge of the plant. He was a
good detail man, and there was no question about who was giving
the instruction; he was giving orders, which was fine. He was a
very good family man, devoted to his wife and children.
When I first started in the business in 1949, and even
before, he would drive to Asti from San Francisco and back in the
same day, every day. It's a chore today, but in those days it
was even more of a chore because we didn't have the freeways. If
he had to go down to Clovis , once the company had bought [ the
winery at] Clovis, he'd start out a little bit earlier and go all
the way down to Clovis and come back to Asti in the same day. I
don't see how he did it.
I remember one time he asked my father why he and Bob tied
up with Prati. His answer was so typical of him, yet so
straightforward: "We decided we didn't want him working against
us, so we decided we'd have him work with us." That's just about
the way those things worked. [ laughter p A typical answer for
him. You didn't need six pages of personnel questionnaires to
answer that one .
Teiser: Is it Prati sons and grandchildren who are with Martini & Prati?
Rossi: In addition to Edward Prati and Elmo Martini, Ed's son, Edward R.
Prati, and Elmo's two sons, Jim and Tom, are working for the
winery.
In 1951 Enrico Prati and Elmo Martini leased the W. A.
Taylor Winery, a two-million gallon plant near Forestville.
After Enrico died in 1952 , Edward Prati and Elmo Martini bought
the winery. They were in the bulk wine business and bottled
further recollections of Bartolomeo Coppo, see pp. 24-25.
2For additional recollections of Enrico Prati, see pp. 17-18 and 21-22
under both the Fountain Grove label and the Martini & Prati
label.
Teiser: Let's go back into your family on the other side. Your other
grandfather was Justinian Caire, but did you say you had no
special relationship with his vineyard or his interest in wine?
Rossi: Justinian Caire, as I understand it, came around the Horn in the
mid-nineteenth century and established a hardware store in San
Francisco to serve the miners who were coming out for the gold
rush. His initial investment in Santa Cruz Island in the Channel
Islands was in 1869. He was a major stockholder in 1880. Under
his direction a vineyard and a winery was established. Wine was
made and sold--
Teiser: Your father and his brother went to Santa Cruz Island?
Rossi: Yes, for vacations. It was something more than a Boy Scout trip,
because it had fairly rough facilities. I guess they had wild
pigs or boars on the island, and they rode horses. You had to
get to the island through fairly rough seas; the water is choppy
through the Channel Islands of Santa Monica. I suppose a boat
came over once a week with supplies for the people who were
running sheep there on the island, or whatever their activities
were. I remember him speaking fondly of his summers, however
frequently he went there as a boy.
Teiser: Was it through that connection that you happened to have an
interest in learning French as a child?
Rossi: No, no. Because as a boy my father spoke both French and Italian
before he spoke English. As a matter of fact, when he went to
the first grade at St. Brigid's in San Francisco, he couldn't
speak English. So they called him Froggy because he couldn't
speak English. But the fact was that all his life he spoke
fluent French and fluent Italian; he just cherished the ability
to speak fluently in three languages. My mother spoke French
fluently .
We had a family reunion over the weekend, and I should send
you a copy of the article that appeared in the Press Democrat.
There were 130 of us that met; we had a family reunion from all
over California at the family home up here at Asti. The central
figure was Father Carlo Rossi, who is a Jesuit at the University
of San Francisco. He has a Doctor's degree in romance languages,
Teiser:
Rossi:
and speaks six languages quite fluently,
were quite fluent in languages.
You have an aunt who taught French, too?
So all of the Rossis
I have two aunts who went into the Sacred Heart order. One was
[A.] Olga, who taught languages. Aimee, the elder of the two
sisters, had a degree in education and she started the University
of San Diego, which is a private school. She was a little bit of
a thing, but she was very enthusiastic and had a winning way.
Her enthusiasm was meant for leadership, and people found it hard
to refuse her, I guess, when she wanted donations or something.
Teiser: Are there others in that generation who are still alive?
Rossi: I have three aunts who are still alive, of my dad's sisters. One
was not able to be here. Albina [Rossi] Wall, who is the mother
of five boys, was here, and four of her five sons were here.
Eleanor [Rossi] O'Donnell has two daughters, one in San Diego and
the other down the Peninsula, and they were here with some of
their children. So we had a very good party.
Teiser: What sort of person was your uncle, Robert Rossi? Your father
spoke of him in his interview, but not at any length.
Rossi: [pause] Well, of course he and my father were very close, and
there was just complete confidence and loyalty between the two.
From a personality point of view, I would say that perhaps my
father was a little more serious, and my uncle was a little less
serious. To put it another way, everything else considered- -not
to say anything against my father, but to say something pro
Robert- -Robert had a better sense of humor. That may have
developed over the years, since he married a lady by the name of
Nellie Mahoney who had a marvelous sense of humor. She probably
fine-tuned his sense of humor in a hurry.
Teiser: His son is Robert?
Rossi: His son is Robert, and he has another son, Richard. And then
there was a daughter, Mary Elena, who died. She married a
doctor. Her husband died very young, and then Elena died several
years ago, in 1983. So there are just the two sons left.
Teiser: The son, Robert, is now with Heublein, is that right?
LMrs. Wall died December 26, 1988.
10
Rossi: Right. Our careers paralleled one another. He is some four
years older than I. Initially involved in operations, in more
recent times he has been concerned with Heublein Wine's grape and
wine acquisition programs.
Teiser: Is Richard in the wine business?
Rossi: No. He went with his father-in-law's firm, Sinks Manufacturing.
They manufacture paint-spray guns and other equipment; their
headquarters are in Chicago.
Early Experience with Wine
Teiser: I asked you earlier if you had always had wine at home as a
youngster, and you told the story about your father- -
Rossi: Where my father had given me a taste test about red and white
wine? I was just a little shaver, and he was overjoyed when I
could tell the difference. [laughter]
Teiser: How old were you?
Rossi: I think I was probably ten or twelve.
Teiser: Did he make you close your eyes?
Rossi: He made me close my eyes, and he gave me a glass of red wine and
a glass of white wine. And I was able to tell the difference.
He was always naturally enthusiastic, but, gee, he really got
excited over that. As youngsters, as my sister and I grew up,
we'd get just a few more drops of red wine with the water than we
had the previous year. From the time we were seven or eight
years old we always had a little bit of red wine in the water,
with the idea of moderation. We always respected that. As a
matter of fact, the whole family did that. It was the same thing
with my cousins.
Teiser: Were you as kids encouraged to go into the family wine business?
Rossi: Not really. I think that my mother, having lived through the
difficulties my father had, felt that maybe going into the
medical profession would be a better life in many ways: one has
his own profession, a degree of independence, and I guess it was
financially rewarding then (and I guess it's still rewarding
now). But even more than that, one has an opportunity of doing
11
something for others. In my mother's family there had been
doctors on the Brandt side. They were Dutch people who had gone
to England, and then from England they went out to the Azores.
Some of the family not only stayed on the Azores but were also on
the island of Madeira.
•
George Henry Brandt, a great grandfather, was born in the
Azores and became a doctor. He married Amie Ellicot, who came to
Madeira in 1821 from England. He established vineyards and a
winery during the mid-nineteenth century. With his death the
venture went to other hands. I would like to look into the
history of this wine endeavor from my mother's side of the
family.
To turn back to George Henry Brandt, the doctor, he came to
Lisbon to work there during the yellow fever epidemic of 1858, at
the risk of his own life, for which he was given a medal by
Pedro V, the King of Portugal. The interesting thing was that
one of the ancestors several generations back in the Fonseca
family (the people who are associated with Lancers ; as a matter
of fact, the Fonseca family still owns Jose Maria de la Fonseca
Successors) received the same award from King Pedro V within two
or three years of my great-grandfather's receiving it. Antonio
Grillez, who is the general manager there at Lancers, was amazed
that one of his forebears and one of my forebears had received
exactly the same award from the same king within two or three
years of each other. It's a small world; an amazing coincidence.
The Winery at Asti
Rossi: I think it's important for people to realize that this winery,
which has a capacity of some 25,000 tons, which is a large
capacity for grapes in terms of this area, was really built
that way to handle those tons ; they handled that kind of tonnage
through the 1960s and 1970s, but they also handled very large
tonnage almost immediately after Prohibition. After Prohibition,
of course, the predominant class of wines that was being sold was
the dessert wines, fortified wines. So Italian Swiss Colony had
its base here at Asti, in contrast to other large wineries in the
business which were essentially San Joaquin Valley-based and who
came to the North Coast for whatever premium wines they
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., has worked with Lancers as a consultant for a
number of years.
12
needed from Sonoma, Mendocino, and Napa counties. As a matter of
fact, they brought the grapes from the Valley up here to process
them.
So this plant crushed grapes not only for table winemaking,
but also crushed grapes for dessert winemaking. I can show you
the sign, "Sherry Cookers," over the door of the building where
we used to bake sherries. And we used to have a large still to
make neutral grape spirits to fortify, and we had another area
where we had set aside tanks specifically to make vermouth
extracts, as well as dry and sweet vermouth. So this was a plant
that was totally integrated for the whole wine business, right
here. That's what its mission was.
Then it was only later, as business was reestablished to
avoid the cost of hauling grapes up from the San Joaquin Valley,
that Italian Swiss Colony made the decision to buy the winery in
Clovis from the Tarpey family. Dessert wines were then made at
Clovis.
Teiser: About when was that?
Rossi: I believe it was in 1940, and before they sold to the National
Distillers [Corporation] in 1942. I believe it was a year or two
prior to that that National had bought Shewan-Jones Winery at
Lodi.
To meet the need for grapes for dessert wine needed for
sales after Repeal, the Italian Swiss Colony people made a deal
with Di Giorgio for so many gallons of dessert wine; they gave
him an equity share in the business.
Teiser: From what I have learned, I think the arrangement with Di Giorgio
began just before Repeal, when everybody could see Repeal coming.
There's a printed program in the Huntington Library that was
issued at the time of the dedication of a plaque in honor or
memory of Joseph Di Giorgio, at the town of Di Giorgio. There
was a banquet, and a number of people, including your father,
spoke. That arrangement began when Joseph Di Giorgio was driving
past Asti from Ukiah. He looked over and saw this winery, and
said to his driver to stop. And he came and asked, in short, do
you want some grapes? They said yes, and so the arrangement
began by which he sent grapes here. Somehow he was paid for them
in stock, and so the longer he continued the more stock he owned.
He continued until he built his own winery. I think that's the
way the story went.
Rossi: That's interesting.
An early sunny morning view of one of the vineyards surrounding the Asti
winery, winter 1988.
13
Teiser: That's from several sources, including an interview with two
Di Giorgio nephews, Joseph A. and Robert, cousins. Joseph
Di Giorgio, Sr. , had more grapes than he knew what to do with.
He had an arrangement with a winery, and something went wrong
with it. That was the story.
•
Rossi: Well, that's fairly typical of the way my father thought, you
see, being fairly conservative on the financing. He'd rather
give away a portion of the equity and then have a stronger
capital base to work on.
Some time in the early 1930s, if not in the late 1920s, my
aunts put some money into the company. There was Esther, who was
the elder, and Beatrice, Albina, and Eleanor. I think they all
put money in. They bought a minor interest.
Teiser: What were their married names?
Rossi: Albina Wall, Esther Rossi (she never married), Eleanor O'Donnell,
and Beatrice Torrens .
The Sale to National Distillers. 19A2
Teiser: When National Distillers came shopping to buy in California, how
did they happen to light upon Italian Swiss, and how did Italian
Swiss happen to sell?
Rossi: I think they had had an interest in the wine business, because
they had already bought Shewan- Jones . Schenley, of course, had
bought Roma, and Seagrams had bought Paul Masson. I'm not
certain about that sequence- -when Seagrams bought Paul Masson; it
could have been later.
Teiser: I think National's purchase of Shewan- Jones was really the first.
See Robert and Joseph A. Di Giorgio, The Di Giorgios: From Fruit
Merchants to Corporate Innovators, an oral history interview conducted 1983,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1986.
2
^Seagrams bought an interest in Paul Masson Vineyards in 1943,
controlling interest in 1950.
14
Rossi: Then I think the Cellas saw that that was a good chance to sell
Roma to Schenley, and then they turned around and established
their own winery two years later.
My father was fifty- six at that point, in 1942 [when Italian
Swiss Colony was sold to National Distillers). I remember my
uncle saying, "Well, the time to sell something is when you have
a buyer, not when you don't have a buyer." That's pretty simple,
but if you think about it for a moment, it makes a lot of sense.
So that was a dominating factor in the issue, plus the fact that
as the wine business was growing it became more and more capital
intensive.
Finally, there were stockholders in the company- -my aunts,
my father's sisters- -who had equity in the company. I think he
and his brother, Robert, felt it was an opportunity for them to
get their share out and into cash so they could reinvest it in
something that was more marketable and would have a dependable
return on their investment, so that they could realize a more
pleasant lifestyle. The Sbarboro family had an investment
interest dating from the Repeal years which they may have desired
cashed out. Di Giorgio, with 37.5 percent interest, was a
factor. Lastly, they sold because the Rossi brothers, E. Prati,
and A. J. Merle wanted to sell.
When National Distillers approached Italian Swiss Colony
with the idea of selling, it was my father and Alfred Sbarboro
who went back and negotiated with National Distillers on the sale
of Italian Swiss Colony to National Distillers. My father took
Alfred with him because he was a good financial man who knew the
business. I think between the two of them they came out with a
better price than they would otherwise have.*-
They decided they would continue to work for National
Distillers on a day-to-day basis, not with a contract but on a
handshake. Because I know my father, and very likely Robert,
felt that, well, if they weren't getting along, the contract
would be useless. They didn't want to have a contract and then
collect on the contract for not having worked. They wanted it
clean. If they got along, they wanted to work with them; if they
didn't get along, they wanted to be free to walk out.
That lasted from 1942 to 1947. There was just a year or a
little more than a year between the date that my father left the
Paoli Gumina, The Italians of San Francisco, mentioned the price
at $3,673,000.
15
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi :
company and the date that I joined. I remember, just as a side
story that father told me, that the people from National came out
and mentioned to my father that now that he was the president of
the company he was going to get such-and-such a salary, and that
Enrico Prati and father's brother, Robert, were going to get
another salary, somewhat less, because they were vice-presidents.
My father said, "No, that's not the way it's going to be. We've
always been partners, and we're partners now, and we will all
have the same salary." That was the way he wanted it to be.
That's the way he felt about his partners.
Was your uncle a good executive, a good business manager?
Oh, yes, the best. He knew the entire business. He'd take a
sales trip East, and he'd call my father at home and they'd be
screaming at each other over the telephone. I remember my mother
saying, "I don't understand why you have to yell at each other;
you can still hear each other over the telephone." It was the
Italian temperament; as they got more excitable the voices became
louder. But they were both good executives and they understood
each other, and they got along very well.
And they had a philosophy between the three of them. If
there was a project that came up that they all endorsed, they
would go on it. If there was one who was reticent, they
wouldn't. It was a fairly good philosophy, because it meant that
one could queer an idea for the three . They might miss an
opportunity, but, on the other hand, if they took a risk on a
certain venture and they had all gone for it, then the
responsibility would be divided three ways, for better or worse.
#*
You told a story earlier about Louis Martini giving a talk- -in
relation to Italians shouting at each other- -
I remember they used to have these Sonoma County winegrowers '
meetings up here, and sometimes the Sonoma County group would
meet with the Napa County group. Maybe it was just the Sonoma
County group, but in any case Louis Martini was the guest
speaker. He had started down in Kingsburg, and he was talking
about the days during Prohibition, I suppose when there was a
certain amount of wine made and sold illegally. He made a
comment that implied that Italian Swiss was involved in this sort
of an operation, if nothing more than in an ancillary way. There
must have been 150 in the room, and my father stood up like a
bolt and said, "No, Louie, you got it all wrong. We weren't
involved in that kind of an operation at all." And the two of
16
Teiser:
Rossi:
them stood and argued, you know, as if they were standing on a
street in Rome and there was nobody else in the room. Everybody
else was kind of astounded. After they had their argument, they
had a glass of red wine and everybody was happy; everything
cooled off and they were as good friends after the meeting as
they were before .
There were some things where my dad would call the shot
right then. He wasn't going to let five seconds go by before he
got that one organized. The two of them were funny, because they
were pretty much the same vintage and pretty much the same
temperament. I would say Louis was a little bit more volatile
than my father. But if you stirred my father the wrong way, he
was volatile, too, particularly on any issues of right or wrong-
-moral issues. I used to tease him that the only time I ever saw
him drive fast was on the way to church. [laughter]
Did you work in the winery as a youngster, before you came to
work there as an adult?
Before I started to work in 1949, I worked in the laboratory with
Lyman Cash, I guess for maybe a couple of summers.
Teiser: What was he like?
Rossi: Lyman was a good chemist. He was a very good technician. He was
amazingly productive in running analyses, and he himself had
developed what has been used all these years as the Cash
modification of a volatile acid still. I guess there have been
thousands of stills made according to his modification. I think
he was in the Navy during the war. He wasn't married when I knew
him, and I always had the impression that he was sort of a lonely
person. But he was good to me and helpful to me. He was one of
those persons who could be aggressive if people hit him the wrong
way, simply because I think he had a little bit of a chip on his
shoulder. But if you approached him right and instead of telling
him to do something asked him to help you, there was no end to
what he would do. I remember people sort of scoffed when he went
to Gallo, and they said he wouldn't last there for three months.
And he was with Gallo for years and turned out to be one of the
most loyal employees they ever had.
17
Working for National Distillers. 1949-1953
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi:
When you came out of college you went directly to work at
National Distillers?
Yes, in San Francisco. When I first came to Italian Swiss Colony
it was in February 1949, and I worked at 781 Beach Street, which
is across from Aquatic Park. John R. Deane, who I believe had
been a two-star general during the war, was the one who hired me.
He was the one who took my father's place as the president of the
company. The man who was in charge of production was Enrico
Prati, because Enrico Prati stayed on with the company after my
father and uncle left. The vice-president in charge of sales was
Bruno (B. C.) Solari, more commonly known as Larry Solari. The
premium brand at that time was called the Asti brand, with
several generic labels and several varietal labels. The Asti
brand wines were under the responsibility of Ray Giordano. At
the same time, another man from my father's era, Bernard Davitto,
who lived in Sonoma County near the town of Sonoma (in fact, he
was a friend of August Sebastiani) , would come down once a week
and have lunch with General Deane. He acted as a consultant to
the winery, or a consultant to Deane.
My first boss was Elbert [M. ] Brown, who was a top man in
the business. He was a good wine taster and had a strong
academic background. He used to think academics, and he had a
way of applying chemistry to winemaking. He was very capable on
yield numbers- -gallons of juice per ton of grapes, and pounds of
skins and pounds of stems and pounds of seeds per ton of grapes,
by way of determining what the expected yields could be. He had
done a lot of that kind of work. I would say he was as advanced
as anybody in the business in that area of technology.
What kind of man was he personally?
Personally I think he was a little bit shy. He and Enrico Prati
were very different people, and they didn't always hit it off all
that well. But once they agreed on an idea, and Prati could get
Brown's academic thinking on something, and Brown could put his
thinking to some practical idea that Prati wanted to put
together, then the two of them were unbeatable. They could bring
different backgrounds and different views to the same project.
Prati was always going off on something new or something
further recollections of John R. Deane, see pages 22-24.
18
different; he was very imaginative. On the other hand, Elbert
was a top winemaker.
Anyway, when I first went to Italian Swiss Colony I was
there on Beach Street with Elbert Brown, and we acted as a
quality control center. We'd have samples sent in of a current
blend, a proposed blend or two, and we'd give the okay on which
blend we wanted the winemakers to make. When it was made they'd
send another sample in.
We had a small laboratory there where we could do some
practical research projects. I recall that we did quite an
extensive study with dry and sweet vermouths. Another project
was to refine the Hubach test which was used as a control for
blue fining and later Cuf ex in wines .
Back to Enrico Prati, he was the first person to put
commercial vineyards in the Anderson Valley. In 1946 Italian
Swiss Colony established a two -hundred- acre vineyard and had
contracted for another one hundred acres. The project was
abandoned in the early 1950s because the grapes didn't sugar up
as much as expected. We were ahead of our time; early ripening
varieties and sparkling wine making had not yet made their mark.
He wasn't highly educated, you might say, from a book point
of view, but he was very intelligent and had an extraordinary
amount of drive. So he would just try these ideas in a practical
way. For example, Enrico developed an invention on which I
believe he wound up getting a patent, which had to do with
putting the cases in railroad cars and then shoring them up or
arranging them in such a way that there would be less breakage.
It was not unusual for him to come up and see Elbert Brown and
say, "Brown, I have an idea. Let's do this." Brown's initial
reaction was that it was crazy, and then he'd get to thinking
about it. Though they were a bit competitive, they were the kind
that if they put their heads together they would make a
tremendous team, because Brown had the technical knowledge and
Prati had the practical knowledge and tremendous drive to get
things done .
The man who used to come out from New York was Ira Siphert,
who was the chief chemist for National Distillers. He was great
on manuals of analytical methods, sanitation, production manuals,
and all that sort of thing, which was valuable. So we would go
over these manuals to be sure that our analytical procedures were
okay. But it tended to emphasize that the people in the
laboratories were more chemists than winemakers. National
Distillers, at least at that time, were not tuned in to
19
winemakers ; they were tuned in to chemists. We had to try to
break away from that attitude in the industry.
As a matter of fact, we did, because the truth of the matter
was that in 1950 the American Society of Enologists was formed,
with the idea of giving more statuff to the winemakers. Up to
that point the people who were running the cellars were really
the cellar foremen, and if the cellar foreman moved a wine from
tank A to tank B, he'd take a sample from before and after and
run it into the laboratory and ask for an analysis. The chemist
was there just to give them the results. But the decisions about
what to do with the wine really came from the cellar foreman, who
might have been wonderful from a practical experience point of
view, but who likely was not a trained winemaker.
So the transition had to come when the trained people from
Davis, and subsequently Fresno State, came in and said what they
wanted to do with the wine. Then they would issue instructions
as to what should be done with the wine, and the cellar foreman
would see that it got done. And the chemist, who was a lab
technician, would run the analysis. University- trained men had
to be something more than bench analysts. Winemakers had to take
charge. They needed professional status.
Actually, this morning I was reading about how Charlie
[Charles] Holden, who was the first president of the American
Society of Enologists, initiated all of that. He had been
associated with the brewing industry, and the brewing industry
had put out a very good magazine called something like
Wallerstein Laboratory Communications. It had excellent
articles, and they were done on a technical basis for the whole
industry. Charlie foresaw that this was what the wine industry
needed. The idea of having trade secrets to the exclusion of
good technical communication wasn't really the broad and best way
of doing things to advance an industry.
Teiser: You've seen a lot of changes.
Rossi: Yes. That took us into National Distillers until about 1953.
Most of the wines were dessert wines, fortified wines, in the
early 1950s. Table wines we had were from North Coast for
Italian Swiss Colony brands, and from the Lodi area for Shewan-
Jones brands. At that time the plant people that I worked with
during my years under National Distillers, in addition to Elbert
additional recollections of the formation of the American Society
of Enologists, see p. 25.
20
Brown and Lyman Cash, were Myron Nightingale at Lodi; Elie
Skofis, my cousin Bob Rossi, and Russ Overby were all at Clovis;
Ed Prati, Joe Aligretti, and Doug Davis were at Asti. Paul Heck
was first at Lodi and then at Asti.
Rossi: General Deane was appointed president in 1946. My father and my
uncle had pretty much of a five-year understanding with National.
After General Deane came in they stayed about another year.
I remember Alfred Sbarboro was fairly short in stature, but
he was lean and had an enormous amount of energy. He was really
in charge of what would be described today as capital projects.
If we were spending and investing money in one of the wineries,
he'd go out and see how it was coming and maybe do some of the
negotiation of the contracts and that sort of thing. It wasn't
that Enrico Prati couldn't do it; there's just so much a person
can do with his time. So, as I recall, that's what Alfred did,
and they were a good team.
Getting back to my father for a moment, he was in charge of
the bookkeeping out here. That's kind of a simple way of putting
it, but he was in charge of the company's finances, keeping track
of them. When one of the top finance people came out from
National Distillers to see his books, he was really amazed that
they were so accurate. The interesting point is that it had been
my father who had introduced a system of LIFO--last in, first out
account ing --which he considered to be very appropriate for a
commodity business. Because if the last wine in would be at a
low price, the first wine out would be at a low price; if the
last wine in would be at a high price, the first wine out would
be at a high price. This method minimized distortions between
the evaluation of inventory and the current price. LIFO system
was in contrast to LIFO, where the first wine in was the first
out.
One of the executives at National Distillers, Mr. Tom Balfe,
brought LIFO back to National Distillers from Italian Swiss
Colony, and I believe he introduced it to them. I'm not quite
sure what he expected to see out here in California, but in any
case he found the books were kept right. My dad was very
conscientious about it.
I have at home some records of the inventory that they kept.
They kept an inventory down to the horses, and they'd show the
horses' age. [laughs] At the end of the year they'd say,
"Tommy, aged forty, died last year," and they would write his
21
value off --$25 or something, that was gone. I say that
facetiously, but the fact is that it showed that they didn't miss
too much, really.
Those are two points I wanted to make about my father and
about Alfred. Enrico appeared on the Italian Swiss Colony scene
in 1909. He was out in the vineyard; he turned out to be the
vineyard foreman for years. I think my father was the actual
manager of the winery when they sold to California Wine
Association in 1915, following my grandfather's death in 1911.
The fact is that in 1920 my father and uncle and Enrico formed
this partnership and bought Italian Swiss Colony- -this plant- -
and the Seghesios were involved. I'm not sure; perhaps the
Seghesios bought Italian Swiss Colony with Prati first, and then
my father and uncle bought their share from them.
Teiser: You told a story one day when I was here about Prati calling you
on the phone --
Rossi: Yes. Like a lot of Italians, he would put an "h" in front of his
vowels, and he used to call me "Hed." If he asked you a question
and you answered the truth, you were fine, but if you bent it a
little bit you were in trouble right away. He'd ask me to figure
out what I thought the price of a wine should be and then he'd
call up half an hour later and ask, "Hed, do you have the
answer?" Or, "You will bring me the answer?" I'd say,
"Mr. Prati, I don't have the answer yet." "That's all right,
Hed, you bring it down when you have it." But if I told him that
I would have the answer in five minutes and I knew I wouldn't
have it for an hour, I was in huge trouble, because six minutes
later he'd call up and ask, "Hed, where are you?" [laughs]
Teiser: Was he a good wine man?
Rossi: Oh, yes. In those days we used to buy a lot of wines from
wineries up and around, and he'd horse-trade with the winery
owner, you know. Then he'd say, "Send samples." He'd take the
sample and we would taste the wine. From the degree of redness
in the foam you could pretty much tell how dark the color was.
But if the color was dark, he'd say to me, "Hed, you will run an
S02?" If the S02 was low, that would make the color appear
darker. Say you're looking for a level of S02 that would be
maybe twenty-five or thirty parts free, with a hundred parts per
million total, and the S02 was almost nil free and maybe fifty
parts per million total, the wine's going to appear darker. So
before he'd buy the wine just on the color of the foam, he'd
always say, "Hed, you will run the S02?" And I'd say, "Yes sir,
Mr. Prati," and run the S02 .
22
Teiser :
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Then I'd call him up, and he'd say thank you. If the SO 2
was low, he'd say, "Hed, that's not the real color; we'll offer
them ten cents less." [laughs] Then the fellow on the other end
of the phone would scream in agony. Prati would put the phone
down and say, "Hed, you will see, he will call me back and come
to our price. "
He was always very good to me.
affection for my father.
It was obviously out of
So that is a little bit about Enrico. He had a little bit
of a difficult transition from the padrone system to the more
modern system. He didn't delegate too well, and that was hard
for him. But as he got into dealing with more educated people
and winemakers , then he would respect their opinions.
It was earlier on a very feudal system here at Asti, was it not?
As much as it was an attempt to be cooperative, it sounds as if
the Sbarboros and perhaps even your grandfather's attitudes were
that they were taking care of people rather than that they were
sharing responsibility. So whatever Prati was reflecting was
perhaps inherited.
Yes, I think that's true. The problem with the system was that
if a man or his wife was in poor health and the padrone said,
"I'll take care of you," that's great. But then supposing the
padrone passes on, dies? You don't know what promises were made
to the thirty- or forty-year-old worker, and so where does that
leave the worker, unless that's perpetuated? It had some
inherent weaknesses. On the other hand, the dictator system is
marvelous and it's the best of everything, assuming that the
dictator is a wonderful person. [laughs]
So Prati worked after my father and uncle left the company,
as the vice-president in charge of production, with General
Deane. Shortly after General Deane came in he brought over
Bruno [C.] Solari as the vice-president in charge of sales. So
the triumvirate when I first joined the company were Deane,
Prati, and Solari. And on the technical end, [Elbert M. ] Brown.
That was quite a bunch.
Yes, a good team.
Tell a little about General Deane.
General Deane apparently was a very, very good administrator. I
think he was very just and very honest. But he didn't know the
23
wine business, and he tended to be a little bit aloof from having
been a two-star general- -which didn't make him any less human,
but he tended to be a little bit distant. I remember once when I
was in San Francisco he called me up from his office down below
and said, "Ed, are you there?" I said, "Yes, this is Ed Rossi."
He said, "Well, I'm looking for Ed Prati." There was also
another fellow there in purchasing named Ed Vallejo, and I made
the comment, "We have too many Eds." There was just a dead
silence on the other end of the phone, except to imply, "We can
take care of that one." It was kind of a bad put-down. The next
day he came around and put his arm around my shoulders and
everything was fine. He realized that he had been unnecessarily
caustic.
Those things can happen. But he was a good administrator,
and I think he saw the needs. One of the things he saw the need
for was an adequate wine inventory control . So he put me in
charge of that, along with Elbert Brown. Wine inventory control
was really my baby, and it was a difficult task because I was
just one and I was trying to keep the records myself, or else I
had a young lady there doing that. But it was sort of the
forerunner of what we're doing today, and I think we were among
the first to do that. He was perceptive enough to see that from
a business point of view we had an exceptionally large proportion
of our assets tied up in wines.
In those days maybe three quarters of our wines were dessert
wines and one quarter were table wines. If you had a mix of
dessert wines that was lopsided, then you wound up with a fairly
significant amount of money that instead of being used up that
year would have to wait for the following year to be liquidated.
In the meantime it was inefficient financially to be carrying
inventory that you didn't need. So it was important to always
know pretty much where you were in relation to sales, which is
the same thing today. If we weren't in balance, then we had to
get in balance. That's standard operating procedure today.
But I think he was one of the first who actually effected a
wine inventory control. That doesn't mean to say that the other
wineries didn't pretty much do the same thing. But he saw that
need and I think it's fair to say that he was one of the first
who at least formally recognized that need.
General Deane was a very pleasant man. Bernard Davitto, who
was in the original Gambarelli & Davitto from New York, had come
out to retire in Sonoma. Bernard was very perceptive; he found
all kinds of opportunities . He always wanted to go back into the
wine business out in California because he foresaw tremendous
24
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
opportunities. The fact of the matter is, he was more aggressive
in his views than my father and uncles were , because they were
here and he had come over from Italy and saw what tremendous
opportunities there were. He always wanted to go back into the
business, but I think he had a son and a daughter who were too
young to do it. If either Bob Rossi or myself would have been
inclined, we could have gone into business with him. As it
turned out, he would have been very right, because from 1950 to
now- -if a person had gone into the wine business in 1950, he
would have done very well. That was sort of an aside.
Bernard would come down and have lunch with Deane once a
week and was sort of his consultant. He'd keep his ear to the
ground for whatever was going on in the wine business. He was a
crony of August Sebastiani, so he talked with Sebastiani and some
of his other friends up there. Then he'd come down and chitchat
with Deane, they'd have lunch together, and that was it. That
was sort of the way Deane would operate . He would come up and
ask my views of something, or he'd ask Prati's views about
something, or he'd ask Davitto's views about something- -sort of
intelligence gathering, which is a carryover from the Army. Then
he'd make his decision. I'd say he was a good administrator. He
once said that getting along in the wine business was
considerably more difficult than dealing with the Russians.
[ laughs ]
What was Bartolomeo Coppo like?
I talked to his son the other day, who is into his eighties now.
Bartolomeo came to San Francisco in 1919 and worked for my father
or uncle. Then he came to Asti in 1921 and was with the company
until he died in 1956. So there was Bartolomeo and then there
were three children: there was Joe, who worked in the bottling
department here; Louis, who was considerably younger, who worked
in the cellar; and a sister, Lena, who married Frank Seghesio.
Frank was a brother of Eugene and Arthur Seghesio, Eda Prati
(Enrico's wife), and Inez Curnow.
Apparently the family had had a winery and vineyards in
Italy, and Bartolomeo himself apparently went to a wine sales
school in London. He was extraordinarily devoted and a good wine
man. His tasting was good and his blends were good. I learned a
lot from him. His loyalty was just totally unswerving.
What was his position here?
He was in charge of the cellar. Which brings up a kind of an
interesting point: I joined the company in 1949, and in 1950 and
up until the point that Petri bought it, we were under National
25
Distillers. Those of us who were in the technical end of the
business were not all that readily referred to as winemakers; we
were referred to as chemists. And that was sort of a carryover
from National Distillers, because the National Distillers' chief
chemist would come out and we'd have meetings with him and Elbert
Brown- -maybe myself, Lyman Cash, and Myron Nightingale. It was
sort of a meeting of the chemists. Other people who didn't have
that influence from National Distillers would be more inclined to
call these technical people winemakers. Although I notice in
some of the notes with Petri in 1950 or '51, Jim Gott, before he
was the plant manager at Escalon, was designated chief chemist-
winemaker. So it was sort of the concept of the chemist.
This ties in, in a certain sense, to the formation of the
American Society of Enologists in 1950, which was promulgated by
Charlie Holden. It was the American Society of Enologists in
those days, and was subsequently changed to the American Society
for Enology and Viticulture. The idea was to provide a forum for
effective communication and exchange of ideas among the technical
people in the wine industry on a scientific basis rather than
just an informal exchange of ideas, which we had at the Technical
Advisory Committee. Which was okay. They weren't really
scientifically written papers, where you'd research the
literature and then put together your research protocol, do the
research protocol, and then report it. You'd report your
findings in light of what had been done before. So they wanted
to provide that kind of a forum, and of course the University of
California people were delighted because it gave them a place to
publish their scientific papers.
But the other thing was to promote the status of winemakers,
or enologists, in the industry, so it did that. The Davis class
of 1948 were Ernest Digardi, Guy Baldwin, Joe Stillman, [Joseph]
Heitz, and myself and Ken Kew. Ken became associated with Martin
Ray. We were one of the first enology classes post-World War II.
The famous class pre -World War II, that you hear so much about,
was Myron Nightingale, Charlie Crawford, Ze'ev Halperin, and Aram
Ohanesian. I don't think they were a Davis class; I think they
were a Berkeley class, perhaps under [Maynard] Joslyn. I know
Joslyn never left Berkeley.
26
The Many Owners of Italian Swiss Colony
[Interview 2: 23 February 1988 ]##
Teiser: I wonder if we can start today by recapitulating the ownership
of Italian Swiss Colony from Repeal on.
Rossi: It was in 1920 that my father and Robert and Enrico Prati
incorporated Asti Grape Products Company. One of the major
owners at that time was also the Seghesio family. Of course
they incorporated with the idea of selling grapes and grape
concentrate for home winemaking, keeping the grapes that we had
up here intact- -the good quality grapes. My understanding was
that during the Prohibition period the grape acreage actually
grew. (I find myself referring more and more often to that
Sonoma County history that I wrote. The numbers seem to
continue to be helpful.) In 1918 there were 16,000 acres of
grapes in Sonoma County, and by 1930 the grape acreage in
Sonoma County had increased to 21,000 acres. The fact is that
the home winemaking was a boon for the grape growers; they just
sold the grapes.
In 1941 Italian Swiss Colony bought the Clovis winery from
the Tarpey family. There are some histories written about
Italian Swiss Colony that date the acquisition of the Clovis
winery after 1942, which was the date that National Distillers
bought Italian Swiss. This is not so.
Teiser: I looked at a clipping this morning that told of Italian Swiss
Colony enlarging that winery in 1941 and '42.
Rossi: Exactly.
Teiser: The Clovis winery- -was it called La Paloma?
Rossi: Yes. You may recall that Paul Tarpey was a wine broker, and he
was associated with Bob Salles in the wine brokerage business.
When Paul Tarpey died, Bob Salles took it over. As a matter of
fact, Bob Salles lived in Marin and was friendly with Joe
Ciatti and Dante Bagnani. So when Bob died, Claire
(Mrs. Salles, who was a niece of Paul Tarpey) had his business
on her hands, which she sold to Ciatti and Bagnani. So the
business Joe Ciatti has today [Joseph W. Ciatti Company]
originated with Tarpey and Bob Salles.
See Appendix II, "A Historical Perspective."
27
National Distillers bought Shewan-Jones in 1939, and they
subsequently bought Italian Swiss Colony in 1942. Many people
wonder how was it that Chateau Lejon and Lejon and Hartley
brands got into the Italian Swiss Colony fold of products.
Well, they got in because when they bought Italian Swiss
Colony, Shewan-Jones was the main wine company that National
Distillers owned. The operation and the coordination of
production and sales activities was then dominated by Italian
Swiss Colony people. Of course Italian Swiss Colony had their
own brands: they had Italian Swiss Colony Gold Medal, Italian
Swiss Colony Black Label Private Reserve Stock, and they had an
Asti brand, which was a premium brand of some varietals and
generics. At the same time they managed these brands that had
come in from Shewan-Jones .
Teiser: Do you know the background of Shewan-Jones?
Rossi: I don't know who Shewan was, but Mr. Lee Jones was a grape
grower turned winemaker up there. I think he was a fairly
bright person, a shrewd businessman. They had a good winery
there. I know that after 1949 and 1950 they had some wine left
over that was essentially lees. This is an amusing story:
they said they made the brandy out of lees . Of course , in the
lees of the wine one accumulates a lot of the fatty acids that
esterify from the yeast. That is what forms a cognac oil, so
the lees brandy was always high in cognac oil character.
In any case, they had this wine and they decided they
would make brandy of it. They made the brandy out of it, but
since the brandy had to be named lees brandy because it was
made out of something less than the best material, the
government regulations insisted that they put lees brandy on
the label. Well, they had the label attractively made up with
lees brandy on it. The amusing part of the story was that in
Lodi a friend of Mr. Jones came along and looked at the brandy
label and said, "Well, you must be very complimented--! see
they've got your name on the label." Because his name was Lee
Jones. [laughter]
Of course, Lejon brand was really a contraction of Lee
Jones' name. I don't think Lee Jones was French, but by the
time they got through putting a French nasal tone to Lejon,
why, "Lee-jon" turned into "Lejon," and that was the brandy.
Anyway, they had what I would say was a good group of products.
Mrs. J. A. Shewan was a partner initially.
28
They had the Chateau Lejon red, Chateau Lejon white, the
Hartley brandy and the Lejon brandy, Lejon dry vermouth and
Lejon sweet vermouth. I think we ultimately came out with a
Le j on champagne .
Shewan-Jones was really the winery where Elbert Brown
worked; so he was a Shewan-Jones man. Shewan-Jones was one of
the wineries where Myron Nightingale started. Also at Shewan-
Jones, when I first went up there, Paul Heck was there as the
plant manager --Paul, of course, being the brother of Adolph.
I'd like to follow through on the ownership of Italian Swiss.
It was bought by National Distillers in 1942. Then in 1949
Petri bought Mission Bell winery from [Krikor] Arakelian. Then
Petri formed Allied Grape Growers, who bought the wineries from
Petri in 1951. Subsequent to that, Italian Swiss Colony was
sold to Petri by National Distillers in 1953. At this time
United Vintners was formed. The ISC wineries- -that is, Asti,
Shewan-Jones at Lodi , and Clovis--were leased to Allied. In
1958 Allied bought Community winery in Lodi. At that point
they closed down the Shewan-Jones winery and concentrated their
efforts on the Community winery, because one was just across
the street from the other.
In 1959 Petri sold United Vintners to Allied Grape
Growers. United Vintners, up to that point, had been retained
as Louis Petri 's winery, which was the marketing arm of the
organization. So Petri kept the marketing arm, and the growers
had the wineries. Profits were split between Petri and Allied
up to 1959. In 1959 Petri sold everything to the growers, so
United Vintners then became a subsidiary of the growers; it was
the marketing arm for the growers, with Petri continuing to
manage the company. At this point any profits went entirely to
Allied Grape Growers.
In 1961, just to get this in the record, Cella was sold to
Allied Grape Growers. In 1964 Inglenook was sold to Allied
Grape Growers. In 1969 United Vintners was sold 82 percent to
Heublein. In 1978 Heublein bought the balance of United
Vintners, the other 18 percent. In 1982 R. J. Reynolds bought
Heublein, and in 1983 ISC wines were sold to Allied Grape
Growers. It was about that time, in 1984, that the term United
Vintners was dropped and Heublein Wines was substituted.
In 1987 ISC wines were sold to ERLY Industries and we were
renamed The Beverage Source . The other thing that happened in
1987 is that Heublein purchased Almaden. They had no sooner
bought Almaden than Heublein itself was sold by R. J. Reynolds
29
to Grand Metropolitan of England,
isn't it?
It's kind of a long history
Teiser: We were wondering if there was any other California company
that had had so many owners?
Rossi: I don't think so. It's just mind-boggling. Then through each
period we had a number of presidents and changes of management.
I've served under thirteen or fourteen different presidents
over thirty-nine years, so it's an average of one every three
years. Even if each of the thirteen were absolutely brilliant
people, it's always been my opinion that it has been one of the
things that has tended to hinder our growth. In competition
with Gallo, for example: Gallo had two men who started in the
mid- 1930s, and they're there today, so it's an uninterrupted
forward thrust. A person may not agree with everything they've
done or the way they do everything, but the fact remains that
they have a decided advantage of just having the one management
over the years. That's just a side comment.
Jacobson: Between all these transitions, how much sensitivity was there
to trying to maintain some sort of continuity of traditions or
culture?
Rossi: Well, I think that up to the time of Heublein it was pretty
well recognized. It was either grape growers or California
wine people. The Heublein people were sensitive to the wine
business, but I'll put it this way: it was a bit more
difficult for them to understand the traditions and the family
heritage that really merged into making United Vintners. And
unless you're living with it on a day-to-day basis, it is more
difficult.
To deviate slightly, somewhere along here the Santa Fe
wines were dovetailed into this; that was maybe in the 1960s.
At the very least we had the Rossi family with Italian Swiss;
Lee Jones with Shewan- Jones ; the Inglenook brand from John
Daniel [Jr.]; the Cella brands from the Cella winery, which was
formed once J. B. Cella and Lori [Lorenzo] Cella had left Roma;
then we had the Santa Fe brand. So we had a lot of brands that
represented wineries or wine brands that had been started by
families and that had come down to one ownership.
First off, it was difficult to totally appreciate the
traditions and the heritages of each of five or six families.
Then from the non- traditional side, from the strictly business
approach, it was very, very difficult to cull out some of the
wines that we had. Because we wound up with a tremendous
30
hodge-podge of brands, which made operational efficiencies very
difficult. Maybe you'd have a Petri wine or a Santa Fe wine
that was very, very popular, say, in one part of the country.
Maybe total sales for the item would be 25,000 cases annually,
and you'd have a concentration of perhaps 15,000 cases in one
market. So in the overall scheme' of things it may not be an
efficient brand by the time you take it, say, at a level of
15,000 cases, split them to two or three different sizes for
two or three different wines. It's not an efficient operation
to keep that brand. But the person who is selling 70 or
80 percent of that brand in a given market has a very strong
opinion about holding his share of the market in that
particular place, so he doesn't want to give that up.
Another aspect of the Heublein's acquisition of United
Vintners is that they had had a very, very successful campaign
where they had branched out from the traditional vodka into the
small -packaged mixed drinks in a number of shaped bottles.
They had the martinis, the manhattans , the old fashioneds, and
all of that just as a convenience package. It represented a
marvelous line extension from the vodka, the best known brand
being Smirnoff.
They successfully had branched into these various
cocktails, which they call "line extensions." With large
companies line extensions are important because they feel that
you run into certain limitations from a marketing point of view
as to what you can do with what you have. So there's always
the question of whether to have line extensions, and then
there's another judgment that comes into it: how many line
extensions is enough, and how many would be too much?
Flavored Wines
Rossi: Having had a huge success, described above, Heublein came into
the wine business in 1969, and we already had had twelve years'
experience under our belts with the flavored wines. So I think
they saw, perhaps through rose -colored glasses, tremendous
opportunities in the wine business by taking a relatively
inexpensive -based wine and adding flavors to it, and then
having a very attractive package and having a very successful
markup. All of which rationale is perfectly okay. I think
that what maybe wasn't totally appreciated was the
extraordinary competitive pricing that exists in the wine
business .
31
Through the 1960s, I would say, we were right down neck
and neck with Gallo, from the 18 -percent -alcohol -flavored wines
down to the under-14-percent-alcohol wines at 12 to 13 percent.
The next generation down was the 9 -percent- alcohol -
flavored wines. Well, Gallo had Boone's Farm series of wines,
which started off with strawberry and was a huge success. Then
we came in with our Annie Greensprings country series , and
subsequent to that we went into our T. J. Swann series. In the
Annie Greensprings series we simply had named the fruits on the
label, and we had kind of a paper label that would be somewhat
similar to somebody doing it in his own garage and putting a
paper bag label on the bottle. On the T. J. Swann series they
opted to just simply name them by the times of the day- -Easy
Nights, Mellow Days- -but they didn't name the flavors, with the
idea that perhaps the life span of the item would be extended.
Rossi: The idea with these flavored wines --it was clearly recognized
that up front a company would have to spend money getting the
brands off the ground. Then, hopefully, once it had caught the
imagination of the public it could perpetuate itself as the
advertising funds were dropped. And if the lifespan was long
enough you'd make up what you had invested [in advertising] in
the early stage of the life cycle and make it up on the end of
the life cycle. By extending the end of the life cycle by,
say, six months, one could make the difference between making a
profit on it versus just trading dollars. So that was the
idea.
Generally speaking, the first person with a new flavor was
the one who got the lion's share of that particular market.
Say, in 1957 we countered Gallo' s Thunderbird with our Silver
Satin. Our Silver Satin volume never came close to
Thunderbird' s volume. But then several years later we
initiated a product that was under 14 percent alcohol that was
called Bali Hai, and we enjoyed a volume of something like two
million cases at the height of the popularity of the brand.
And Gallo had a tropical flavored wine, but I don't think it
ever reached that proportion. So clearly the first on the ,
block was the fellow who got the biggest piece of the pie.
32
Practical Projects with Elbert M. Brown
Teiser: Getting back to the beginning of your career at National
Distillers, you said you started work under Elbert M. Brown.
What was he like?
Rossi: He was a very bright person. Technically he was ahead of his
time. He was a good wine taster, and knew wine chemistry and
applied wine chemistry to day-to-day winemaking. It was a
privilege to work with him.
Teiser: Did he teach you a great deal?
Rossi: Well, sometimes he was a little bit cranky in the morning, but
after we had lunch things would loosen up. If you listened to
him you could learn. In those days, in 1949 and 1950, we were
shipping three gallons of dessert wines to one gallon of table
wine. So we were concerned with the idea of the alcohol
equivalency of a given wine, the equivalent proof gallon
content of a gallon of wine as it relates to the proof gallon
equivalent to a ton of grapes and what efficiency you could
realize from a ton of grapes as being converted into wine. We
developed a scheme which showed how many equivalent proof
gallons you could get out of a ton of grapes, as translated to
wine.
Then we carried that through for years, as a matter of
fact. And I think we developed a fairly sophisticated system
of showing that it tended to relate, you might say
unromantically , to getting a ton of grapes and determining the
actual proof gallons on a sugar basis in the ton of grapes, and
then calculating the proof gallons that one had as wine
products at the end of production. So what one would have to
do would be to work from the total grape received, and then
determine what percent the stems and skins were, and then
deduct the stems and skins from the total weight of the grape.
Then you'd get the sugar solids in the juice and determine what
sugar you had, and once you had the sugar then you'd get the
equivalent potential alcohol out of the ton of grapes.
Simplistically, a person could visualize that if your
operation was a matter of converting tons of grapes into grape
concentrate, then you could get a very high efficiency because
you wouldn't be undergoing any fermentation, you see. But the
minute you start to ferment there were losses inherent in
fermentation. So if you had one winery and you were making a
lot of concentrate , and then you had another winery making a
33
lot of wine with a lot of fermentation, and then you had a
third winery that not only made wine but distilled it, you
would find that the more operations the more opportunity there
was for losses.
We tried to pinpoint the losses, which a person almost had
to do to appreciate what the winery was doing. It wasn't fair
to say that a given winery had a 95 percent efficiency versus
another winery at 90 or 85 percent, when you come to find out
that they have two different operations going. In the same way
it wouldn't be fair to compare a winery, say, on the North
Coast with a relatively small berry with a high proportion of
skins to the size of the berry with two or three large seeds in
it, to a fairly large Thompson Seedless berry in the Valley
where there were no seeds at all and very thin skins .
Teiser: Didn't you have to feed Brix into that?
Rossi: Brix came into that, yes. Brix was a measurement of total
solids on a weight basis- -percent by weight total solids. But
then you'd have to deduct from that total solids the non- sugar
solids in order to arrive at the sugar solids. Then that would
give you the initial proof gallons in the ton of grapes . Brown
was very good on that, and I picked up on that. I learned a lot
from him in these matters . So we had some very good numbers . I
would say he was ahead of his time on that. That was a
critical consideration in the early 1950s when the dominant
crush was toward dessert wines.
I worked with Elbert Brown as an assistant chemist.
Because of the influence of National Distillers, Italian Swiss
Colony didn't have a lot of winemakers; we had more chemists
because that was the title that they gave to their technical
people. So in a certain sense a chemist was a substitute for a
winemaker. Anyway, I was an assistant to Brown. I did work
envisioned as practical research and development and quality
control. Then, independent of Brown, I got into this wine
inventory control. I started with Brown in 1949, and then
wound up coming to Asti in 1953.
When National Distillers bought out Italian Swiss Colony,
Elbert Brown moved from Lodi to San Francisco to be at the
headquarters. Italian Swiss Colony offices were at 781 Beach,
which is just down from that Irish coffee cafe, the Buena
Vista, across from Aquatic Park. Brown and I had our office
and laboratory upstairs from the general office.
Teiser: Did your work then feed right into production?
Rossi: Oh, yes. Then we'd go out to the wineries and bring them a
method of analysis that we had worked up, or discuss the
quality of a wine that we didn't think was up to par and how we
could get it better.
Teiser: Did you monitor all production, actually?
Rossi: Yes, I did monitor production, now that I stop to think of it.
We just had a lot of wines coming in. We reviewed production,
reviewed finished blends . The winemakers would make up a
laboratory sample of a blend that they would propose. Then
they would send in to us a sample of the current blend and a
sample of the proposed blend. We would taste them together and
then decide whether the inherent quality was satisfactory and
whether the continuity of product was okay. That was what we
did.
Teiser: One thing that's been said is that National Distillers was an
inconsiderate employer- -was not very thoughtful of its people
here .
Rossi: I didn't have the experience or the contact to make a judgment
on the impact or the relationship between the National
Distillers people and Italian Swiss people, say at the
marketing level or the sales level. In those days we didn't
have marketing people. The president was John R. Deane. I
mentioned that Bernard Davitto was a consultant. The vice-
president in charge of production was Enrico Prati, and the
vice-president of sales was Bruno (B. C.) Solari. Then we had
a man in charge of Asti brand sales by the name of Ray
Giordano.
My contact with National Distillers was through Elbert
Brown and Ira Siphert, one of the chemists for National
Distillers. As I recall, he was a very pleasant person; he was
not an unreasonable person. I think that although the salary
levels in those days were relatively low by today's standards,
the salary advancements that I had over the years were
satisfactory. And I found General Deane to be a good boss man.
Louis Petri Buys Italian Swiss Colony. 1953
Rossi: In 1952 we had a change of management; National Distillers were
anticipating selling the company. General Deane left the
company, as did Solari, and for the better part of the ensuing
35
year they brought in Adolph Heck as an interim president. I
always got along with Adolph well. Adolph knew the management
at National Distillers, and I think it was his job to sell the
company .
I don' t think they sold the company because they were
dissatisfied with it. The president of National Distillers at
the time was a man by the name of John Bierwirth, and I think
it was a matter of policy that he wanted to get out of the wine
business with the idea of putting assets to work in the
petrochemical business. In retrospect I don't know that that
was such a good decision, because I don't know that they made
that much money on the petrochemicals. In fact, I have a vague
idea that they did not.
I'm not sure for what amount they sold Italian Swiss
Colony to Petri, but then they turned around and put a
substantial amount of money into Almaden, which was a much
smaller company. I wonder if that was really all that
consistent. If they had wanted to stay in the wine business
they could have kept Italian Swiss Colony and then bought
Almaden, and they would have had a pretty good piece of the
pie. They would have had a very, very strong position.
Teiser: As I remember, the Gallos were interested in buying Italian
Swiss at that point.
Rossi: Yes, they were. When it was understood that Italian Swiss was
up for sale, as I recall Ernest and Julio Gallo came in and
made a down payment of a sum of some $25,000 to take a look at
the company. I don't know if they made a bid for the company
that was unacceptable, or whether they decided that they wanted
to keep a one -brand company. But I think for the money they
put down they got a total look at our sales and inventory
positions, so they got their value out of the money they
advanced.
By the time they looked at the company and walked away
from it, that was the exact time for Petri to strike. Because
National had missed on one potential buyer , and they knew there
weren't a lot of potential buyers out here. So Louis Petri
•'•According to Louis Petri, "Totally we paid about eleven and a half or
twelve million dollars for it." Page 23, Louis A. Petri, The Petri Family
in the Wine Industry, an oral history interview conducted 1969, Regional Oral
History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley,
1971.
36
stepped in. Maybe he took a few samples of wine, but he didn't
look at the company with a microscope the way Gallo did. He
just knew what he wanted to spend for the company, and he made
his pitch and bought it. And he bought it very well, because
as a matter of fact the wine inventory at that time I believe
was in the range of thirty to thirty- five cents a gallon, and
within a year he'd made a substantial amount just on the
increase in value of the inventory. So he was a smart
operator.
Teiser: He should have been conservative, from his background, but he
was innovative.
Rossi: And he had a flair for the dramatic, but it wasn't the dramatic
that got him way out on a limb. Of course, he had Lelio
Bianchini with him, who was bright and who was his older
cousin, and then he had Benny Mortara, who was the treasurer of
the company. Benny is still alive today. Benny was very
conservative, and so I guess he'd tend to hold Louis back from
some moves that maybe he shouldn't make. He had a system of
putting ideas out to people and then mulling them over. I
think once the risk was fairly well defined, he said either go
or no go. [If go] everything went into action, and everything
started to happen. [laughter]
Teiser: Did he bring his people in?
Rossi: When he came in, you might say that on the production end of
things Bianchini took over. You have to think back and realize
that a year before Petri bought the company, John R. Deane and
Solari had left so Petri had his team. Petri had those three
that I mentioned, and then he had a man by the name of Lloyd
Shelley, who was in charge of credit. Then he had a man by the
name of--
Rossi: --Frank Underwood, who was vice-president of sales; at least in
1950 he was. And another man by the name of Frank (Tommy)
Tomlinson, who was in charge of the bottling at Escalon. Then
on the Escalon staff they had Jim Gott, who was in charge of
winemaking; he was the chief chemist and winemaker. When he
moved up to being the plant manager they had a man by the name
of Tommy Leong, who was a winemaker and chief chemist. Then
they had two long-term employees, Jack Wiesenbeck, who was the
cellar master, and John Oliveri, who was in charge of
maintenance .
37
On the West Coast they had Clair Fischel, who was the
western division sales manager. Interestingly enough, in 1950
Petri brought in for a period of time Lou [Louis R. ] Gomberg as
an executive assistant. Here it is, in the Petri Grapevine.
November 1950.
Teiser: [reading] "Appointment of Louis R. Gomberg, wine consultant and
executive assistant, has been announced by Louis A. Petri.
Gomberg' s appointment becomes effective November 1."
Rossi: This July 1951 issue of what Petri used to put out as the Petri
Grapevine shows that Professor Edwin Twight served in an
advisory capacity at Escalon. And here is a picture of Tommy
Leong, who was the chemist. They have his title here in 1951
as assistant chemist and winemaker. They put the titles of
chemist and winemaker together, which is along the lines that I
talked about.
Teiser: Petri had the quality of being able to make people loyal to
him, did he not?
Rossi: I think so. He had a very bubbly personality. It was hard not
to like him.
Teiser: Had you known him before he became associated with the company?
Rossi: No. I joined Italian Swiss in 1949, and he bought the company
in 1953. In '49 I was only twenty- five years old, so I was
between the ages of twenty-five and twenty -nine- -I was under
thirty while I was with Italian Swiss prior to its having been
bought out by Petri. But Louis would have been ten or fifteen
years my senior, so there was too big a disparity in our
particular positions in the industry for me to have known him.
Teiser: Were your families friends?
Rossi: No, I don't think so. Not too much. I don't think my father
was particularly close to him as a personal friend. But I
think, there again, that Louis Petri came between the
generations of myself and my father.
Teiser: And his father and uncle were not your father's generation
either.
Rossi: No, we were just sort of half between. I don't think my father
got married until he was over thirty. I made my presence known
in the world a year later, so there was a thirty-year spread
between myself and my father. So Louis could have been fifteen
38
years junior to my father and fifteen years senior to me, which
would have just thrown the whole thing out of whack.
Teiser: Angelo was his father, and I guess he was older.
Rossi: Angelo was older. They knew each other, and I'm sure they
respected each other.
Petri had Signature wines at that time which were premium
wines, endorsed by a number of prominent wine connoisseurs and
experts. This was just about the same time, in parallel, with
Italian Swiss Colony's introduction of the Asti brand wines,
which included both generic and varietals. So we were thinking
along the same lines. We had our standard wines, but then as
history progressed and the grapes in the North Coast counties
became more valuable and expensive, then we had to move into
premium wines .
Teiser: When the two companies came together, what facilities did Petri
bring in?
Rossi: As I recall, Petri had three facilities: they had their home
base at Escalon, and then a table winemaking North Coast winery
up here in Forestville. The manager there was Ed Offut. They
also had the Mission Bell winery down at Madera. That was the
big one.
Teiser: How did your duties change?
Rossi: In 1953 I came up to Asti and I worked as an assistant
winemaker, and then as a chemist winemaker until 1957.
Teiser: What did you do?
Rossi: I was in charge of the laboratory and in charge of making wine
here at Asti.
Teiser: Did that take you into procuring grapes?
Rossi: No, because we had Allied Grape Growers grapes. They had the
grapes and we had committed to take them, so they just brought
them in. There wasn't a lot of choice at that time.
Teiser: When your grape supply is beyond your control, what do you do?
Do you just create categories of labels?
Rossi: You're hitting a very sensitive point. Petri 's alliance with
Allied Grape Growers was formed in 1951, so they were in place
39
in 1953. In 1953 Petri acquired ISC, and our wineries were
leased back to Allied. So the Petri-Allied combination swung
into effect. I think one of the key thoughts behind Petri 's
idea was that he would take those grapes and make them into
wine and market the wine, and they would retain for the grapes
a given number of dollars per ton, which constituted operating
capital for Allied Grape Growers. Then he would return to the
growers the difference between what they generated as profits
less the retains.
There were two things that happened at that time, as I
recall. One, the thought that Petri had was that in having the
growers own the winery directly there was an elimination of one
income tax, because you didn't have a corporate income tax and
then an individual income tax. Two, they thought they had a
sufficiently successful marketing program (or, really, I might
say sales program in those days, because we're not talking
marketing) that they would be able to return to the growers a
price per ton that was in excess of the average market price
even after they took out the money for the retains. And Louis
Petri was able to do that. Gradually, from this operation, he
and his associates were paid off. So he made a fairly handsome
amount of money out of it, but it wasn't just a cash deal that
he walked away from. He had to make it work, and he really
did.
There were two things in his favor, as I see it. When
they signed the grapes up they signed them up likely with the
view in mind that those grapes matched the sales. In those
days you had grapes down in the Valley that were used for
making dessert wines, and the North Coast grapes that were used
for making red wines were good quality grapes but the price was
inexpensive. So as time went by and they brought grapes in for
winemaking, they were in fact in concert with the mix of
products that were being sold. As long as the grape supply and
the product mix were pretty much in concert, then everybody was
happy .
But as time went by, and as it shows on this chart of
mine, the mix started to change from dominantly dessert wine
into table wine. The key date for that was in the late 1960s,
where table wine started to dominate over dessert wine, you
see. In 1968 table wine sales exceeded dessert wines, and in
1976 white wine sales exceeded red table wine. So I think
that's where the whole idea ran into trouble. You see, we were
^•Appendix II, Chart II, in "A Historical Perspective."
40
getting into more expensive grapes and we were getting into a
mix to accommodate sales- -because after all, it was less
expensive grapes that were used to supply that two to one ratio
of dessert wines over table wines . The minute we got into
table wines- -and, further, the minute we got beyond 1970- -then
the North Coast table grapes became more expensive.
You can see here, for example [refers to "A Historical
Perspective" ], that during the Petri era of 1954 to '59, the
average price of grapes in Sonoma County had not exceeded a
hundred dollars a ton except in these two years back in the
1940s. From 1950 to 1959, the average price of grapes might
have been sixty to sixty-five dollars a ton; it was low. That
was fine, because they were pumping out a lot of red table
wine. We had our burgundy, Petri had his "Pastoso" burgundy,
we had our G&D Fiore de California burgundy, we had our Italian
Swiss Colony Zinfandel, we had our Tipo Red chianti and a Gold
Medal chianti. All those are fairly substantial volumes of red
wine. We could afford to put grapes in that were of good
quality, because they were all North Coast grapes. So they had
tremendous quality.
The difficulties started to present themselves from 1959
to 1969. You can see that the prices started to go up a little
bit, and they may have averaged $140 a ton. After 1969,
getting into the 1970s and up to 1983, when Heublein had the
winery, you can see the price of grapes just skyrocketed. They
went from $255 up to $540, and that's where the bind came in.
Because we had these grapes, and many of them were Carignane
grapes that did not represent the quality that we wanted for
our wines, and they were higher priced. The difference in
quality between the North Coast and Valley grapes was less,
say, with grapes like Carignane than it would ever have been
with Zinfandel, yet these were high-priced grapes and we had
signed a contract with Allied for them.
So it started off in harmony, because grape supply and
need were in concert. Then, as table wines became more
popular, there was less need for the less expensive grapes down
in the Valley. We said that in 1968 it swung from dessert
wines to table wines, and then in 1976 white wines dominated,
which was fine . By that time the mix of grapes in the North
Coast counties had swung out of Carignane, out of Golden
Chasselas, out of Sauvignon vert, into grapes like Cabernet
Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Johannisberg Riesling- -grapes that
weren't available. The thing fit when Petri put it together,
but as time went by the conditions changed, really through
nobody's fault. But they did change.
41
Teiser: When you were working here, then, were you in charge of quality
control for the whole series of wineries?
Rossi: No. After Petri came in I came up here. As I recall, we had a
system whereby we somehow monitored each other's wines; so
there was no head quality control person. We had wine being
made at Clovis, at Escalon, at Asti, at Madera, and over here.
Each one sort of checked on the other person.
Developing Wines
Rossi: In 1957 that came to a halt, because at that time Gallo came
out with Thunderbird. That was what implemented a big change
in my career. In 1957 they said to me, "We want you to break
away from the day-to-day winemaking at Asti," and they put me
in as a director of quality control and research development.
My job was to come up with a product that was competitive with
Gallo 's Thunderbird in six weeks. ^
Teiser: How did they happen to choose you?
Rossi: I guess they just knew that I was interested in wine quality,
and maybe good with the detail- -more of an R and D person than
a production person. Like lots of people, one can do both, but
they thought that my temperament fitted that.
Teiser: Am I right in believing that you are known as being a good
blender? Am I using the right term?
Rossi: Yes. You might say it's product development, which includes
blending, and then clarification and processing in wines to
bring out the best in the blend.
Teiser: By then you must have shown your talent in that area, in order
for them to have chosen you.
Rossi: Yes. I think it was that, plus they knew my temperament- -that
that was more to my liking. It seems to me that in R and D
you have to have a temperament that wants to shoot for the very
best. From a practical point of view, a marketing person is
always going to be on the side of, "Let's get all the quality
we can because it makes the product easier to sell." On the
For more on special flavored wines, see pp. 53-70.
42
production side, the production man is saying, "Hey, you know,
you're putting too much quality into this blend," or, "You're
being too fastidious in the way in which you're asking us to
prepare the blend. It's not a practical way of doing it.
Can't we do it in a more simple way?" And maybe, "Your mix of
grapes and your ingredients are too expensive."
So you have the production man saying, "I want to do
things simply," you have the accountant saying, "Your
ingredients are too expensive," you have the marketing man
saying, "I think that's a wonderful blend; let's go with it."
Then you have the product development man who says, "I think
this is the best mix that we can get."
There has to be some push and pull. For a top
administrator, as long as he plays the tune right, you have an
equal credence given to each end of the business. As the team
works together they begin to understand what you can do and
what you can't do. I guess the thought I have in my mind is
that if the product development man doesn't come up with the
very best, then the production man and the marketing man never
know what is possible. If a product development man on a scale
of one to ten always comes in at a six or a seven, because he
himself has the idea in his mind that that is where he wants to
be, they never see the best. I think you owe it to them to
show them the best, and then somewhere you reach a compromise.
That's point one.
Point two, I think it's a terrible mistake for a product
development man to say, "I have an exact idea in my mind of
what you, the marketing man, needs, and I'll see you in four
months." You wind up pursuing a particular line of attack to a
point of refinement where the basic blend or the character of
the wine may not be what the marketing man wants.
**
Rossi: So if a product development man wants to develop something
fairly quickly for marketing and the company needs it in order
not to lose time, it's very, very important to put together
something "quick and dirty," say, within a matter of three or
four weeks. Then he can bring a prototype to a marketing man
and ask, "Is this what you want?" The marketing man then says,
"Yes, but--." Then, the next time, you bring in your original
product and you bring in the "but" --you bring in what
additional characteristics of the blend he needs. Then you
reach a consensus of opinion more quickly.
Teiser:
Rossi:
Jacobson:
Rossi:
43
The other ingredient that has to come into it- -it seems
that all my life we've been pressed to shoot from the hip and
make estimates of what the shelf life was going to be. Making
a wine, putting it in, and holding the wine for five days at a
hundred degrees does not give you a reliable measure of what
the wine's going to be like after, say, six months on the
shelf. Ideally (and I don't know that I've ever seen the
ideal) a person should be working on product development- -
ideas, concepts, and products- -way ahead of their potential
use. Then put them on the shelf and let the time on the shelf
show you what you want to have. That way one is not guessing;
you're basing your knowledge on what's happening.
Surprisingly enough, we've had very few new product
failures due to the product. We've had new product failures
because the concept hasn't been all that good.
I should ask you about bulk sales .
engaging in bulk sales also?
In all this time were you
That's a good question, and I don't have a ready answer for it.
I don't think through the Petri period and the Allied period we
were making that much wine we couldn't use. It only got to the
point where we couldn't use it after the North Coast grapes got
too expensive. When we started to backlog North Coast wine
because we couldn't use it, then we had some bulk sales, as I
recall. Of course, all through the Petri and the Allied and
the Heublein period we were constantly monitoring our inventory
position, so we'd either buy or sell or trade. That was just a
standard operating procedure to keep the inventory in balance.
A person has to make a judgment as to how much age he wants on
a wine to begin with, and then target for that age so that his
inventory is always in balance. You have what you need, but
you don't have too much. I think everybody does that pretty
well.
When they moved you into R and D in response to Gallo's
introduction of Thunderbird, did they do other things to
strengthen R and D?
They gave me a couple of technicians. Over the years, as that
activity grew, I added to the group. Over a period of time we
had a very good group up here at Asti.
Jacobson: What did the R and D department consist of before 1957?
LSee page 58.
44
Rossi: Well, we didn't have it. It was just nonexistent. It was only
initiated by necessity.
Teiser: When you create a product, do you start by analyzing what you
want to achieve?
Rossi: You taste the competitive product and you decide pretty much
how you think you ought to make it. In that particular
instance we used a neutral base and we added citrus flavors.
So you adjust to the same level of residual sugar and the same
level of total acidity and the same color, and then you get
flavors from the flavor companies and add them. You either
match it exactly or you come up with a characteristic that you
think might be even more acceptable to the consumer. That's if
you're targeting after a given product.
If you're going out into new ground- -for example more
recently on the flavored champagnes, Franz ia had come out with
that strawberry -flavored champagne. We decided that instead of
being just another "me, too," and coming out with a strawberry-
flavored Jacques Bonet champagne, we'd come out with a
raspberry -flavored one, which is just as nice as the
strawberry. If it's a non-flavored table wine you have to make
a decision as to what price category it's in. Then if you know
your inventory you can go into the winery and say, "I'll use
some of this variety, or some of that variety, or something
from Asti, or something from Escalon," and you pretty much can
conceptualize just how you're going to put it together.
I suppose if there is one thing that I've done
consistently over my career- -because I've had a lot of
different titles; when National came in there was a certain
change of titles and change of responsibilities with people who
would take over various spots. But the one consistent theme
through the whole thirty-nine years is that I've always dealt
with wines, and I've always dealt with what could be called the
product development or the development of new blends, of new
wines. I've never let go of that. I've never been asked to
let go of that, principally because that has always been my
main interest and longest suit.
Teiser: This implies that you have some intellectual concept of what a
wine should taste like, or what this kind of wine should taste
like compared to that kind of wine, which must come partly from
experience .
Rossi: It comes from experience, and I think it comes from an
appreciation of working with marketing people. You know, in
45
developing an idea, when marketing people say what they want,
it translates to my mind to what they want in a glass. But
then from what they want in a glass it translates in my mind to
what ingredients I need to put together to get where I want to
be. That's always been fairly easy for me to do. I think that
in any relationship, if you are willing to recognize what the
other fellow has in mind you're well on your way to coming to a
meeting of the minds. If you're too rigid and say that this is
the way it's going to be, forget it. Go buy your own winery.
Teiser: But in order to understand what that other fellow wants, you
have to have some almost abstract idea of wine.
Rossi: Yes, exactly. Then there are always some precepts that I've
carried in my mind. I don't mind saying that I've always
carried from Amerine that a wine is born in the mind of the
winemaker. I've never forgotten that. So a wine is born in
your mind. As long as you try to conceptualize in your mind
just about the right thing, and then you work toward that, then
you have a target to work toward.
One of the things that I always felt important in working
toward a blend is that I've always felt that a blend is
analogous to a chain. The chain is no stronger than the
weakest link. If you make each component of a blend in a
certain way, then you can maximize the quality of the overall
blend. This is sometimes a hard bill of goods to sell to
production people, because if you're putting together, say, a
50,000 gallon blend and you have 10,000 gallons each of five
components, it's easier for the production man to put the whole
50,000 gallons together and then refrigerate it or clarify it
in a certain way so that the whole blend shapes up .
Maybe two of those 10,000 gallon legs have a very good
North Coast wine in them, and when you clarify the whole 50,000
gallons you lose some of the flavor of the top quality wine.
What you really want to do is hone in there on the weakest link
of that 50,000 gallon blend and get that 10,000 gallons
straight. Once you get that 10,000 gallons straight you maybe
don't have to fool around at all with the other 40,000. You
maximize the quality inherent with the blend and you get the
10,000 straightened away so that, although it may not be the
nectar of the gods, at least it's not something negative. Then
you get the maximum out of the blend.
On a scale of one to ten, if you have a wine that's a five
and you clarify it in such a way that you get it to a six or a
seven, and your other ingredients are eights, then you're going
to maximize the whole blend. If you fine the whole wine,
you're going to go from a five to a six on the whole wine, when
actually your target could be the eight. But you have to have
the patience and the persistence and the mental attitude to go
after each leg of the blend. Essentially you say the quality
control of the blend is not necessarily how the blend comes
out; the real quality control is to quality control each of
those five legs. Because if each of those five links comes out
strong, the entire chain will be strong.
I should point out that often an entire blend can be
processed without losing overall quality. Good understanding
between development and operational people works these things
out.
In essence, that's my whole career. [laughs] It's been a
long thirty-nine years, but that's it.
Teiser: There's a lot of skill and experience that goes into it.
Rossi: That's the fun part of it.
Teiser: Hard work?
Rossi: Yes, but it's rewarding. You can't be in it only for the
money. You've got to have the joy of coming out with a good
wine.
Jacobson: Would you have ideas of your own about what the market might
need or want, independent of your chief marketing person?
Would you go after some of those?
Rossi: Yes, sometimes.
Teiser: Was there someone sitting on top of things when they asked you
to make decisions, a person in the company who made the final
decision?
Rossi: On all of these product development projects over the years?
It was generally the president of the company. He generally
would take into account what the marketing people would want.
47
Post-Repeal Generic Wines
[Interview 3: 24 February 1988 ]##
Teiser: I'll begin, if I may, by going back and asking you about
something that is probably before your time, but that you may
know about, and that is the nomenclature of generic wines just
after Repeal. As I recall, red wines were called claret and
burgundy, and white wines were called sauterne.
Rossi: And chablis? Not too much chablis. In 1949, when I first got
started, I remember very clearly that the Livermore Valley- -
the Wentes and the Concannons--had very good Semillons and very
good Sauvignon blancs, and they also had a sauterne. Then
somehow or other the Semillon, Sauvignon blanc, and the
sauternes seemed to fade out of favor. Then the chablis came
in. I think there was more sauterne, maybe in the 1940s, and
as we got into the 1950s and 1960s chablis emerged.
Teiser: Do you think the sauterne in that earlier period was closer to
French Sauternes than chablis? It seems to me I remember (and
I might be wrong entirely) that almost any white wine was
called sauterne. But maybe it was because by necessity they
made sweeter white table wines, for one thing.
Rossi: I remember one of the first things I experienced when I was
with Elbert Brown was tasting the Shewan- Jones Chateau Lejon
red and Chateau Lejon white. And the white was a Sauternes
style. One point that makes the tracing of the evolution of
white generic nomenclature difficult is the fact that in the
1940s we had very little idea of protecting the wines from
oxidation. In 1949 and 1950 I can remember reviewing the white
wines that Italian Swiss Colony had, and by today's standards
they were largely oxidized! And I don't think we were the
exception; I think we were much more the rule than the
exception.
Teiser: And in Europe, too.
Rossi: In Europe, too. So it could have been that the heavier style,
with a little more sugar and a little darker color, was more
reminiscent of Sauternes, and therefore the nomenclature of
sauterne for that particular style of wine at that time- -say,
in the 1940s and early 1950s- -was appropriate.
But then it seems to me that, as we moved from the dessert
wines into the table wines in the 1950s, most of the wines that
were being sold were red table wines, not white table wines.
48
Then in 1957 we moved into the flavored, 20-percent-alcohol
wines. And in the mid-1960s we moved into the lower alcohol
flavored wines. Towards the end of the 1960s and into the
1970s the flavored wines, or the special natural wines, seemed
to taper off. It was in the mid-1970s that the white wines
emerged as being of more consequence than reds. [looks through
notes] It was in 1976 that white table wine sales exceeded red
table wine sales. I think as we moved into that era chablis
seemed to be a very popular wine style. It was a chablis to
the extent that it was less sweet, maybe, than the original
sauterne; it was made from maybe a more neutral grape. By 1976
the volume of white wine had come on strong.
As a consequence, instead of the source of grapes being
mainly the North Coast areas, whether it would be Napa, Sonoma,
Mendocino, or maybe even Livermore, I believe that many of the
grapes that were going into the white wine sales in 1976 were
already from the San Joaquin Valley. So they had more than
their share of Thompson Seedless , which is not to knock the
wines. But at the same time, when you got into wines that were
a little more neutral initially and didn't have the ability or
the character to develop with age, then people emphasized
avoiding oxidation and concentrating on having a fresh wine.
And a fresh, pale, less sweet wine fit the chablis category.
That would be my assessment of about what happened.
Teiser: It seems to me that one of the earliest jokes I heard about the
wine industry after Repeal was that you would go in to visit a
winery and women would be sitting there bottling by hand. Over
here they'd be bottling burgundy, and over there they'd be
bottling claret, and both wines would be coming out of the same
pipe in the next room. Was there actually much distinction
between those two labels?
Rossi: I don't think there was a great deal of distinction between
claret and burgundy, because I think a lot of the traditional
red wine blend that I remember here in Sonoma County was a
blend of a Carignane, Zinfandel, and Petite Sirah. The
Carignane gave volume and was a very good grape viticulturally
because it withstood mold and rot and threw a good crop; it was
a reliable grape. The Zinfandel, of course, gave the aromatic
qualities, but you had to get through any rain, because the
clusters were tight and tended to mold. So that was touch and
go, but for that risk you got the flavor of the Zinfandel. In
the case of the Petite Sirah, it had a fairly dark-colored
wine, and that gave the body. Petite Sirah is sometimes not
considered quite as noble a grape as Pinot noir, but
nevertheless for, say, a burgundy or a claret or what is now
designated as a red table wine, Petite Sirah is still a very
good grape .
That was sort of the mix of grapes. I don't recall,
really, a blend of claret going out from the time that I was
with the winery; I think it was mostly burgundy.
Teiser: Were they made with a higher residual sugar than now?
Rossi: I'm not sure about that. I think the traditional residual
sugar for burgundy has been around 1 to 1.2 percent. By the
time a person gets up to 1.5 percent, it's coming off too
sweet. I think that in the late 1950s, as the reds came out,
there were some wines that were specifically called "red vino,"
and the red vino wines were maybe 2 to 3 percent sugar. So
they had a considerable amount of sugar to them, but they
telegraphed that on the label.
Let's talk for a moment about the white wines. I think if
a person has a good base wine, non- sweetened tank of white
wine, then you can add various levels of either a sweetening
material- -concentrate or juice- -or what we call light sweet
white to sweeten that white wine. You can add 5 percent and
wind up with 1 percent residual sugar; 10 percent is 2 percent,
20 percent is 4 percent. Out of the same two ingredients, if
you just jockey the proportion of the sweetening material, you
wind up with a chablis and a sauterne, and maybe a Rhine and a
Rhineskeller or a Rhinegarten. You have four blends of varying
levels of sugar with two ingredients. A person can do that,
and you can be within the generally accepted norms, which would
be a positioning of the sugar and acid.
I've never felt that that really was giving the customer
the true value that he deserves , because the only variable
there is the level of sugar and the level of acid. I think the
base wine itself should have a variance. The aromatic
qualities are going to be essentially the same on all four of
those blends. I think it's better to blend in some varietals
into the base wine and have a different base wine for each of
the wines. That, to me as a winemaker, makes more sense. I
think as the consumer becomes more knowledgeable and is more
perceptive he will be able to appreciate that.
The argument against that is that, in fact, we don't have
that perceptive a consumer, so why not just make a blend as
simply as we can and put it out? It goes back to the
philosophy of how you want to be in the wine business: do you
want to be totally led by a consumer who isn't all that well
50
informed, or do you want to take a position as a wine man of
leading the consumer? I think probably the best alternative
would be somewhere between the two extremes .
Getting back to the red wines, again I'd have to say I
don't recall having the same-based wine and sweetening to one
level for claret and another level for burgundy. That could
have been, but I don't recall that.
Teiser: That is to say, there wasn't much difference.
Rossi: I think right after Prohibition there was not much difference,
because I've talked to people who made wine right after
Prohibition and they shot the same wine out to both labels. I
don't think that was too much of a deception. If they had
good, sound red wine that had low volatile acids- -that is to
say, that didn't have any vinegar flavor- -and they put a wine
that was stable in the bottle, there were going to be some
customers who just preferred the shape of a claret bottle and
other customers who preferred the shape of a burgundy bottle.
The whole industry was in such infancy, and we had regressed in
a certain sense to the point that people were drinking three
gallons of dessert wine to one of table. We were struggling
just to get the table wine back, just to get the table wine
out, rather than to make refinements of the table wine; it was
premature to make refinements of the table wine.
Teiser: Your chianti-type wine: you had used the term "tipo" chianti
before Prohibition, and I see that occasionally the word
"chianti" was used after that.
Rossi: Way back in the early beginnings of Italian Swiss Colony they
put out a red and white chianti. I guess it was in my
grandfather's time, because it was right around the turn of the
century. I suppose the Italian government was upset about that
because, they said, a Chianti can only come from Italy.
In 1906 the Italian Swiss Colony people changed the name
to Tipo Red and Tipo White, "tipo" meaning, in Italian, "type."
In two or three years the following statement appeared on the
back label:
Please be advised that hereafter our TIPO CHIANTI
WINES will be known as TIPO.
We find this change necessary in order to
differentiate from various brands of chianti that are
51
Teiser :
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi:
now on the market in imitation of our well known
product. Please call for TIPO.
Before and after Prohibition it was consistently labeled
California Tipo Red and California Tipo White.
•
Was the word chianti used after Prohibition?
Yes. In recent years there were competitive wines in claret
bottles and in jugs labeled chianti.
Was there an attempt to make it like the Italian Chianti?
you ever use Sangiovese in it?
Did
In general our Tipo Red was a softer, less tannic wine than
Italian Chiantis. We had some grapes here on the property that
were Sangiovese grapes. Reportedly they were brought over from
Italy. As I recall tasting the wine, we made a large tank or
two of that wine every year. In the lineup of wines, between
the Zinfandel, the Carignane, the Petite Sirah, and the
chianti, the chianti did have its own characteristic. Trying
to relate that back in time to years later, say around 1980, I
went to Europe looking for Trebbiano to import for Heublein
wines. In the Romagna area, you can't taste Trebbiano without
tasting Sangiovese. And as I recall, the Sangiovese wine was
fairly similar to what we had here as Sangiovese. Of course,
they have Sangiovese throughout Italy, and in Tuscany they use
it for Chianti. The Sangiovese in Romagna they use for another
wine. I think there could be some soil and climatic
differences that would be impacted on the quality of the wine.
But to get back to the answer, the simple answer is yes,
we did have Sangiovese. The blend, typically, for Tipo Red was
a blend of Sangiovese with the best Zinfandel we could find,
and that would be aged for two to four years . That was our
"Tipo Red."1
It sounds good.
It was good, and it was always bone dry, never sweet.
LSee also "The Story of Tipo," by Edmund A. Rossi [Sr.], Wines & Vines .
August 1938, p. 6.
52
Wines of 1950-1969
Rossi: In the 1953 to 1969 era we also introduced the Inglenook
vintage wines, which included both table wines and dessert
wines .
Teiser: Were they actually made over there at Inglenook?
Rossi: Yes, the table wines were. They never generated a huge volume,
but we were trying to find a niche, again, for use of wines
made from the more expensive North Coast grapes. Our constant
thrust was in that direction. It was a big problem, because we
had a lot of North Coast grapes that we had to absorb into our
system, from the agreement with Allied.
Jacobson: Looking over the report of United Vintner's R and D department,
you have this section which lists various products developed
over the period 1960 to 1975. I was wondering if you could
describe what was the idea behind developing the products. Was
it in response to a particular marketing demand, or was it
something that you came up with internally? Most of these
products seem to be flavored wines .
Rossi: Going back to the little report on the history of winemaking in
Sonoma County that I wrote, I would say that it tends to
delineate the progression of the swing from dessert wines into
table wines over that period of time, from 1950 to 1980, which
is a fairly long span of time. In the 1950 period, just as I
got into the business, it was still one quarter table to three
quarters dessert.
As we said before, it progressed by 1968, a roughly
twenty-year span of time, to where table wines approached those
of dessert wines and surpassed them at that point in time. In
the meantime, the sale of all wines had gone from roughly
150,000,000 gallons per year to about 220,000,000 in 1969, and
245,000,000 in 1970. From 1970 to 1983 they went from about
250,000,000 to almost half a billion, or 477,000,000 gallons.
Of course, in that period of time the growth was almost
entirely from table wines, and after 1976 it was almost
entirely white wine.
I think we can just divide our discussion into two periods
of time, one from 1950 to 1969, which was the Petri through the
Allied period, and from 1969 on, which would essentially be the
Heublein period. To me there are two characteristics there.
We had the emergence of the flavored wines, and then the demise
53
of the flavored wines, you might say, with the peak around
1977. [looking at notes] These figures show 1974 with
52,000,000 gallons of under- 14 percent flavored wines, so that
was about the peak.
Let's talk about the flavored wines for a moment. The
kickoff was in 1957, when Gallo came out with their
Thunderbird. Italian Swiss Colony's response to that was to
come up with a match for Thunderbird in a matter of a couple of
months, which we were able to do. Our answer to that was
Silver Satin. Then there was just sort of a race, one on one.
I remember Gallo had a Coca-Cola flavored wine called Eden Roc,
and we countered with our Golden Spur. Then we had our Swiss
Up, which was a flavored wine- -all 20-percent-alcohol wines- -
which had lemon and lime. And just down the list here: we had
lots of flavored wines, and this list shows both 20 percent,
16 percent, and 14 percent. The truth is that most of these
wines were 20-percent-alcohol wines. Some were only 16 percent
because in certain states they only allowed a low alcohol wine.
Teiser: Which wines were they?
Rossi: These show 20 percent and 14 percent. As I recall, these were
dominantly 20-percent-alcohol wines, and to a lesser extent 14-
percent-alcohol wines. The wines were Silver Satin, Silver
Satin with Bitter Lemon, Golden Spur, Swiss Up, Arriba, Rhythm,
Hombre, Red Showboat, Vin Cafe, Collins, Zombie, Cuba Libre.
These were all developed prior to 1968. In that period of time
we also had some wines that were under 14 percent alcohol.
Bali Hai was an under -14 -percent -alcohol wine and was never a
20-percent-alcohol wine. It was the first significant
departure from the 20-percent-alcohol flavored wines. We had
that developed in the spring of that particular year (late
1960s), and Petri sat on the idea until he had his new budget
for the next fiscal year before we brought it out. It was an
immediate hit; it went beautifully.
Jacobson: Was it a deliberate choice to make it under 14 percent?
Rossi: Yes.
Jacobson: What was your thinking behind that?
Rossi: Well, that it would be more palatable and more drinkable it if
had lower alcohol. So we did do that.
There were some other wines here [looking at list]: we
had a Gypsy Rose and a Satin Rose that could have been under
54
14 percent (it's not indicated here). But that was sort of the
product development prior to 1968, or you might say prior to
Heublein; Heublein bought United Vintners out in 1969.
In this same period of 1953 to 1968, which we could call
the Petri-Allied period, we have to remember that,
notwithstanding the efforts on the 20-percent-alcohol flavored
wines, there was an emergence of red table wines- -or just plain
table wines, with the emphasis on red table wines, at least
early on. Then whites emerged later.
These were blends that were sort of old standbys.
Standard burgundy- -and incidentally, I have claret here, so I
guess maybe we did have a claret. And Zinfandel. And in that
period of time we had Napa- Sonoma -Mendocino wines. It was a
play on words there, where they mixed up the pronunciation and
put the words together in a cute way on the t.v. or the radio.
We had red, white, and rose wines.
Speaking to that specifically, if that was Napa- Sonoma -
Mendocino, it had to be North Coast grapes. We have to recall
that at that particular time the price of North Coast grapes
was increasing, so even then, as we are now, we were making an
effort to come out with wines or brands that would use North
Coast grapes and be able to command a price that would give us
a return on those grapes. So that particular endeavor has been
going on for some time.
Jacobson: I'm curious to know how many of those wines introduced in the
period 1957-68 were introduced as a direct response to a
competitor product already existing on the market, and how many
were the first of their kind introduced on the market.
Rossi: Are we talking about the flavored wines or the standard wines?
Jacobson: Both.
Rossi: I think the standard burgundy and the standard Zinfandel was a
competitive thing that had just been ongoing. I think the
Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino was a clear example of trying to be
innovative; that was a first for that. Probably that was the
first proprietary wine that was brought out having been made
from grapes from three counties .
Then I list blends such as Sweet Vino, light sweet red,
and light sweet white. Those were in keeping with the times of
55
the emergence of red wines and white [table!
were specifically designed as more sweet.
wines, but these
Terser : Were they for the Eastern market more than California?
Rossi: I don't know that I could comment on whether they were
specifically for one market more than another. No, I think it
was fairly universal. The Italian population that we have on
the East Coast, in New Jersey and New York, really like their
red wines fairly heavy and less sweet. But we have to remember
that Italian Swiss Colony brand, as such- -at least initially,
in the days after Prohibition- -was never that strong in New
York. The reason was that as a result of the difficulties of
shipping grapes during Prohibition, my father and uncle and
Enrico Prati made an arrangement with Gambarelli & Davitto in
New York for them to monitor the quality of the grapes that
were shipped from California to New York—and not always
received in the best of conditions- -and get them into cold
storage before they would break down completely. I think they
did that fairly religiously for us.
As a consequence, when Prohibition was over they made an
arrangement with Gambarelli & Davitto, with them as a franchise
bottler, to bottle the wines that we sent them. But rather
than bottle them as the Italian Swiss Colony brand, they'd
bottle them out as Gambarelli & Davitto and use the G&D label.
So G&D reds were shipped directly by Gambarelli & Davitto, not
really through a distributor; they had trucks that would
deliver the wines directly to retailers. It was a very good
business. But the point is that the G&D label was what was
promoted in New Jersey and New York, and not Italian Swiss
Colony.
In the meantime, our market in other parts of the country
went along fine. For example, in Philadelphia I think we were
probably doing business with Spatola, which is an old-time firm
that was a franchise bottler. We had franchise bottlers in a
number of areas. We had a franchise bottler in Denver; I think
the name was Carbone . That was fairly common. We had a good
share of the market under the Italian Swiss Colony brand in
Chicago.
Teiser: Did you have a market in New Orleans?
Rossi: Yes. I think we were okay in most areas of the country. It
was only in that New Jersey/New York area where Italian Swiss
Colony wasn't that well known. But it was that way by design.
Gambarelli, incidentally, was a woman- -Victoria Gambarelli.
56
She was one of the first women executives in the wine business.
She was a very bright person and a good business manager in
those days. She was a forerunner of women in business today.
Davitto was Bernard Davitto.
I also have other wines that we worked up prior to 1968
which were natural wines. We had a red, white, and rose Paree;
we had a red, white, and rose Swizzle. Then we had Italian
Swiss Colony chianti, which was different from the Tipo
chianti. We had an Italian Swiss Colony Rhineskeller with, as
I recall, residual sugar of around four and a half percent. We
also had the [sparkling] Cold Duck. It emerged on the scene
and was a blend of red and white wine, and part of the red wine
had the Concord flavor in it. So that boosted champagne sales.
Through this whole span of time, if there was a consistent
growth in anything there was a consistent growth in champagnes.
I have here that from 1914 to 1918 there were one million
gallons of sparkline wines sold; in 1948-1950 there were
1.5 million gallons. It was ten times itself to the 1969-1974
period of time, and by 1983 it was three times again, from
roughly 15 million gallons a year to where in 1983 there were
43 million gallons of sparkling wines used. I guess a simple
way of saying it is that total wines went from 150 million
gallons to 477 million, which would be a tripling, in the span
of time from 1948-50 to 1983. The sparkling wines, on the
other hand, went up about thirty times, from 1.5 million
gallons to 43.4 million gallons. And Korbel was in there early
on, so you can see why they are such a success. They were just
the early birds.
Jacobson: Staying within this '57- '68 period, what were the biggest
sellers of all your flavored wines and other products?
Rossi: I daresay that Silver Satin was the single best seller that we
had in the way of 20-percent-alcohol (which was maybe actually
19-percent-alcohol) flavored wine. Of the under 14-percent -
flavored wines, Bali Hai, I would say, was the biggest seller.
Again, we were first, and the first guy on the block is the one
who gets the lion's share of that particular market.
Our sales on red wines were always strong in that period
of time. But I would say the single strongest wine we
introduced in that period of time turned out to be the ISC
Rhineskeller, the white; because it was popular then, and it's
still popular. It had staying power for over twenty years.
ISC chianti had a good volume.
57
Teiser:
Rossi:
Jacobson:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi :
Was that in a typical chianti bottle, like the earlier
wines?
No. That was just a standard -shaped bottle.
'tipo"
Those would be the three standouts introduced during that
period of time.
Were there any introduced during that period that fell flat?
Oh, we had a lot of those. I don't think too much came of the
three products prepared after mixed drinks. The Collins, the
Zombie, and the Cuba Libre didn't amount to too much.
Another wine that we introduced was a half and half
vermouth, half dry and half sweet. For some reason or another,
to a traditional wine man that would seem like a crazy idea.
But it wasn't so crazy. It made a different blend and it sort
of emerged with a distinctiveness all of its own that had a
charm of the flavor; it had a little bit more flavor than the
dry vermouth, but it wasn't as sweet as the sweet vermouth.
Somehow that tended to stick.
The Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino wines did fairly well, too. And
we held our own on Cold Duck; that was a popular item. But I
think that, industrywise , the Cold Duck made its appearance and
then seemed to fade. I think on these new wines that come out
it's important for a company to participate, particularly if
you're one of the larger companies. But it's fairly important
to understand that when you're allocating budgets for the
promotion of new wines that it be done with a lot of
consideration. One has to have enough money to fully promote
the new item and get it off the ground, but at the same time a
certain amount of caution has to come into the decision so that
one doesn't go overboard on a wine that isn't destined to have
a long period of popularity. At the time of making the
decision to initiate, a person can't know.
Did these wines take you into purchasing of materials- -
flavorings and so forth- -that you were inexperienced with?
Oh, yes, that was always a big problem. The problem, as often
as not, was that people wanted the product yesterday. We
always seemed to be struggling with high- temperature , short-
term stability tests on wine that were designed to try to
approximate what the wine was going to be like after six months
or a year on the shelf. We never did pinpoint what the
correlation was.
58
But what we did, we had a protocol that we followed In
developing all the wines, but particularly the flavored wines.
We would get an idea of what kind of a flavored product the
marketing people would want, and then we would put out the call
to the various flavor companies to send in samples . Say we
were working with Swiss Up, which was essentially lemon and
lime; we'd get a number of samples in of lemon and lime, and
when we'd got all the samples that we wanted, we would add the
flavors to wine and just make a rough judgment as to the
intensity of the flavor.
Actually, we'd add them to the wines pretty much in
proportion to their cost. We would arbitrarily say, well,
let's add enough lime and lemon flavor to the wine that the
investment in flavors would be, say, twenty cents a gallon
(just to take a number out of the air) . If you have twenty
flavors and you can hardly smell six out of the twenty,
obviously they've stretched the flavor to the point where
you're not getting the value of the intensity of the flavor
that you are trying to buy. So just on the quantitative
measurement alone, some will be discarded.
The next judgment a person makes is just based pretty much
on the characteristic of the flavor: do you like it or not
like it? Does it have too much of a lemon rind or lime rind
taste? Is it overly turpiney? Is it overly juicy? Or is it
juicy enough? Those kinds of characteristics, just on a flat
out, first taste.
Then we would add these flavors to wines and would set
them up at three different temperatures . One we would hold
cold, the other we would hold at room temperature, and the
other we would put for five days at a hundred degrees. Then we
would set them up at two levels of sulfur dioxide, one a fairly
low level of sulfur dioxide, perhaps in the area of twenty-
five to thirty-five parts to the million S02-free; the other
would be at a level that would be maybe double that- -fifty to
seventy parts to the million S02-free. We'd also have another
variable where we would test these wines: the bottles would be
kept just partly full.
Essentially, what we were testing was the stability of the
flavor under heat, as a reaction to oxidation conditions; as a
reaction to reducing conditions which would be brought about by
the SO 2; and then we'd taste the wines. When we got through
that tasting, that would further cull out some of the flavors.
We were looking for the most stable flavor under the widest
range of shelf -life circumstances that we could possibly
59
imagine. Sometimes the sulfur dioxide would tie up with the
citrus flavor and just totally offset it; it would get some
odd, peculiar flavors.
Later on, when we got into working with almond flavors,
which have aldehydes in them- -it \s commonly known that
aldehydes and 80s combine. One minute you'd have an almond
flavor, and by the time you put the SO 2 in it would bind the
aldehydes and you wouldn't have the almond flavor. So that's
the sort of thing we were looking for.
Getting back to the Swiss Up example, we would then be
working with the most stable flavors that we selected. Maybe
out of twenty flavors we'd work it down to two or three that
were exceptionally good. Then we'd put a mix in of the lemon
and the lime flavors which we thought was pleasant. Then you
had to work on the base wine --the neutrality of the base wine,
the degree of vinosity or lack of vinosity that a person
wanted, and of course, finally, the sugar and acid level. We'd
put that together and present it to marketing.
Oh, as a matter of fact, in those days, almost before we
would present it to marketing, sometimes we ran an enormous
number of consumer taste tests here at the tasting room at
Asti.
Teiser: How did you do that?
Rossi: Well, we had a regular machine going, I think [laughs]. We had
two very good men on flavors . We had a fellow by the name of
Frank Robirds and, of course, the other fellow was Ferrer
Filipello. I don't remember the exact date that Ferrer came to
us. We'd make up these blends during the week and then we
would test them on the weekend.
We'd have fifty consumer taste tests, and we'd have them
broken down rather simply by sex, extent of consumption, age,
and then the preference. We had a scale of maybe one to ten
degrees of liking or disliking, and they would mark it off. We
would total the scores on the fifty taste tests, which actually
was a comparison between one variable between two different
products. We could have the same sugar and acid level, but we
would have a little bit more intensity of lemon and lime flavor
in one versus the other. Then we'd run another test where we'd
keep the lemon flavor the same and increase the lime, and we'd
run another test keeping the lime flavor the same and
increasing the lemon.
60
So all these variables we'd test out fairly thoroughly,
with the idea of getting a consumer reaction. And they worked
very successfully, because even though people weren't that
precise on being able to verbally describe the differences,
they were a lot more precise on their taste results.
Teiser: When people came into the tasting room, did you ask them to
fill out a questionnaire?
Rossi: Yes. We'd have the consumer taste testing set up in the back.
We had two young ladies who would come in on weekends and work
all day Saturday and all day Sunday. They'd say we were
running some consumer taste tests in the back, and invite
visitors to participate. Most people responded very quickly.
Sometimes we'd maybe garner three to five hundred taste tests
over a weekend. By noon on Monday we had them all worked out,
and by afternoon Monday we had the results.
Then we'd work up other blend variations that we'd want to
do, and we'd do that from Tuesday to Friday and be ready the
next weekend. It just worked great, because we had a lot of
work to do, and it was very inexpensive. It seems to me that
the expense of running these taste tests--! hate to tell you
the figure, because if I tell you the figure it's going to make
everybody else look as if they were the original spendthrifts .
I think it was around ten or fifteen cents a test, which is
like the price of a cup of coffee in 1900 or something
[laughs] .
Anyway, they were fantastically helpful to us. Then we'd
go down and review the results with the marketing people. This
wasn't designed to be a very sophisticated rundown.
Did you have any way of checking the results?
Well, sometimes we'd run our proposed blends against existing
competitive wines. If it was important enough, we'd run one
hundred taste tests to see if the second fifty confirmed the
first fifty. During the summer it was an absolute bonanza
because we'd have people from all over the country, people on
vacation going through the winery. We had quite a bit of
variability. So that was very helpful to us and really gave us
a lot of guidance.
Jacobson: I was curious about Silver Satin. You said that was one of
your best sellers , and that it was introduced in response to
Thunderbird. You also said that it has been your experience
that when you weren't the first out with a product, it didn't
Teiser:
Rossi:
61
do as well.
Satin?
What do you think made the difference with Silver
Rossi: Silver Satin was relatively a successful item with us, but I'm
sure the volume never was close to Thunderbird' s , for two
reasons: one, Gallo introduced a good product early on; they
were the first. And secondly, they put an enormous amount of
money behind it.
Teiser: Thunderbird was said to be the most alcohol for the money on
the market. Was that right?
Rossi: Probably so. Because it was 20 percent alcohol on the label,
and of course the California labeling regulations allowed us a
plus or minus 1 percent actually in the wine, in contrast to
what was on the label. So if it was 20 percent alcohol on the
label, it meant that the wine had to test 19 percent or better,
which meant that most of the bottles would be 19.1 percent to
19.3 percent. It was likely in those days that it was Thompson
Seedless that was used as the base wine, and the price was
quite inexpensive.
Looking at it another way: I don't know what the price of
those wines were, but whatever they were --if they were $1.50 a
bottle, you still had a full (in those days) 757 milliliters;
and if you look at it from a proof point, you had 38 to 40
proof of alcohol in that bottle, and that was half of the
alcohol that one would have in a bottle of whiskey or a bottle
of brandy. Because the bottle of whiskey or brandy would be
80 proof, so they were only 40 percent alcohol. And a bottle
of whiskey (I'm not very good on prices) was probably in the
area of four to six dollars a bottle. Without trying to get
very specific on the comparison of prices of Thunderbird and
Silver Satin in those times vis a vis the distilled spirits,
that would be a true statement.
Of course, it was in response to the fact that, I think,
the blacks in the South used to buy white port, and then they'd
take a drink of the white port out of the bottle and then put
concentrated lemon juice in the bottle and mix it. That was
the way they used the white port. So then Gallo was perceptive
enough to come along and say, well, if that's the way they want
to drink the white port, we'll give them the white port already
mixed.
The other advantage you had in making the Thunderbird in
the same way as we did in making the Silver Satin was that the
source of the sugar didn't have to be grape sugar; it could be
62
sucrose. That made a difference in the taste. Sucrose made it
a softer taste, and you didn't have the non- sugar solids that
you get in grape concentrate. It turned out to be a smoother
product. As a matter of fact, that goes without saying for all
of these flavored wines . We were able to use flavors and we
were able to use sucrose.
Flavored Wines of 1968-1983
Jacobson: Why don't we move to the products introduced after 1968?
Rossi: Okay. The scene now, in 1968 or 1969, was that table wines had
already overtaken dessert wines --
n
Rossi: --and furthermore, the flavor wines were still going strong,
except we were heading into an era in the early 1970s where the
20-percent-alcohol flavored wines were going to be about flat,
and the lower alcohol flavored wines were going to become more
popular, with a peak in about 1974. And at that time in the
history of the wine business, as exemplified at least by Sonoma
County grape prices, 1970 was the first year in history that
the average price of grapes in Sonoma County was over $200 a
ton. That was somewhat of an aberration, as a matter of fact.
I guess there was an increase in the demand for the grapes
simply because they needed the wine, and it was the lowest year
of acreage yield in a number of years . There was only one and
a half tons per acre yield, so there was probably some crop
loss that year. What I'm trying to say is that there was
apparently a double effect there: there was an increased
demand for the wine and a decreased supply.
So that catapulted the average price per ton in Sonoma
County from $133 per ton in 1968, to $166 per ton in 1969, and
$256 per ton in 1970. And then it kept going pretty much
straight up.
Teiser: I believe earlier in that "Historical Perspective" you pointed
out that in the middle thirties, at the time of the prorate, it
was $12 per ton.
Rossi: Exactly. So that was the scene post-1968. In our company that
was just exactly the year that Heublein made their entry, in
63
1969. You can see that they headed into an era in the wine
business that was going to be pretty tough going.
Then our thrust was pretty much towards flavored wines,
[looking at confidential company reports] As a matter of fact,
our production of 20 percent flavored wines peaked in 1972. On
the other hand, the 14-percent-flavored wines were picking up a
pretty good head of steam, and they peaked for us in 1976.
Therefore, our thrust was to try to maintain or slightly
improve the sales of our 20 percent flavored wines . But we
were really into the 14 percent alcohol flavored wines at that
particular point in time because, without divulging the actual
numbers , at the peak of the 14 percent flavored wines our
volume was five times the peak of the 20 percent flavored
wines .
I don't think that we were any aberration from the
industry, because it shows over here on these figures for U. S.
wine consumption (which, incidentally, I have through the
kindness of Lou Gomberg) a peak of about 12 million gallons for
20 percent flavored wines in 1970, and a peak in 1974 (which
may not be the precise peak) of 52 million for 14 percent
flavored wines . So this is about a four and a half to one
ratio, and our company had a five to one ratio. So we were
just about in sync. It's hard to be really different from the
industry anyway.
In any case, that's sort of the background of what we had.
Therefore we had the flavored products after 1966. One was
called Key Largo; another one was called Sangrole, which was a
sangria type; Zapple was an apple -flavored type; and Waikiki
Duck I think was a tropical -flavored sparkling wine. You might
remember my having mentioned a few minutes ago that the 20-
percent-alcohol wines came out first, and then one of our most
popular under- 14-percent wines was Bali Hai. Bali Hai would
have been about a 12 -percent- alcohol level.
After 1968 we got into another total area. We got into
our Annie Greensprings , which were in response and competitive
to Gallo's Boone Farm wines. The alcohol levels on these wines
were about 9 percent to 10 percent. We had Annie Greensprings
Cherry, Annie Greensprings Berry Frost, Annie Greensprings
Peach Creek, Annie Greensprings Plum Hollow, and Annie
Greensprings Apricot Splash, all pretty much made with the same
protocol as I described for the 20 percent flavored wines but
with lower alcohol levels. That was one marketing thrust, and
there we had the flavors clearly delineated.
Some time later we came through with another series of
flavored wines, where we thought we might be able to stretch
out the life cycle of the flavored wines by not mentioning the
fruit flavors. We gave imaginative, proprietary names to them:
Mellow Days, which I remember was a strawberry -flavored wine;
Easy Nights, After Hours, Magic Moments, and Stepping Out. I
can't answer my own question: I'm not sure whether the T. J.
Swann wines had a longer life cycle, vis a vis the Annie
Greensprings , or not.
Those were our offerings .
Teiser: How did you coin the names- -did you have an advertising agency
think of them, or did someone here come up with them?
Rossi: I think that was pretty much a function of the sales and
marketing people. We probably had an ad agency that would
design a name or a label or a concept for introducing the new
product.
Teiser: Did you do any research on the names, which kinds would work
better than others?
Rossi: The marketing people would. They'd put a name and a product to
what would be known as focus groups, with the idea of getting a
cross -section of consumers' reaction to the product and the
name. On a number of occasions I was invited (I was never
excluded) to go to some of those focus sessions, but just
simply never took the time to do it. They were fairly
interesting sessions, and I think that they were worth the
effort to do. It's my own personal opinion, which may not be
totally authentic, but I think when a person is in the area of
introducing new products, your hope is to have a big winner,
but on the conservative side you want to avoid a big loser.
You want to avoid any losers. So the consumer taste test on a
product, and the focus groups on the concept, label, and the
name- -they can't all be big winners, but if they can head off
the losers--! think those purposes were served by what we were
doing.
Teiser: In the matter of coolers, are they direct descendants of the
low alcohol wines?
Rossi: I have to think about that for a moment. Yes, there seems to
be a consistent trend, from 1957 to 1987, over that thirty year
span. In 1957 we were still in the era where we were shipping
65
considerably more dessert wines than table wines. The first
wine that anybody thought of introducing in a flavored wine was
a 20 -percent -alcohol flavored wine. As time went by, the
popularity of table wines increased and the attention turned
to, say, 12-percent-alcohol flavored wines, vis a vis Bali Hai
which would be one example. Even some of the 20-percent -
alcohol wines that we talked about we had out at 16 percent
alcohol for one or two states, and we had them out at under
14 percent alcohol. The next step down from 12-percent-alcohol
flavored wines was to drop down to the 9 -percent or 10-percent -
alcohol flavored wines. Then we find in the 1980s that we're
talking about coolers, and we're not even concerned about a
wine category. We're talking about a cooler which is not
7 percent alcohol anymore, and if it's below 7 percent alcohol
it's not considered a wine.
On the one hand a person might take the position and say
that there's no relationship between a cooler and a low-alcohol
flavored wine. The low-alcohol flavored wine is at 9 percent;
the cooler might be at 6 percent alcohol. You still have wine
in the product, and you're still building up the product to
have a good taste balance, and the flavors are there. The only
thing that has been projected into the equation is the use of
juices, and the juice adds an extra dimension of taste. So
we're almost following a sociological trend towards lower
alcohol products, the use of juices, which are more healthful,
and you might say lower calorie drinks, because as the alcohol
goes down there are fewer calories.
While there aren't neon signs going on about these
coolers, they are in concert with sociological trends that are
happening. They are healthful, they're easier to drink, they
seem to be more popular, plus they are easier to reconcile with
the fact that there's a movement against alcoholic beverages.
That could be subscribed to by some people as worthwhile. But
instead of these more radical approaches towards solving the
problem of alcoholism, or even alcohol and driving, we can get
into a solid educational program. We have a good educational
program, and the problem is still there, and it's being
reflected in the selection of beverages. So I would say there
is very definitely a tie-in. And, of course, it's apparent
that over the last few years these coolers have become very,
very popular, and they have become a significant asset to the
wine industry.
Where we'll go from here is difficult to tell. It's
common knowledge that in the summer or fall of 1987 we had a
flattening of cooler sales. I don't know what that portends,
66
but I would agree that if you're going to stay in the game you
have to have exceptionally strong financial resources.
Teiser: Another trend that I haven't heard much about recently, that I
think Jerry Lohr keeps following, is simply lower- alcohol, more
or less traditional wines, and no -alcohol wines. He is using,
I think, reverse osmosis. Did you ever follow minor trends
like that?
Rossi: Well, we did come out with a low-alcohol wine called Asti
Spumante. It was made with Muscat. It had a nice flavor and no
alcohol, made in conjunction with equipment that Fresno State
University had. Essentially we took a dry Muscat and put it
through some kind of a vacuum system that took the alcohol off,
and then we added juice back. And we came up with quite a
palatable product. Then we carbonated it. It was an okay
product. The reverse osmosis I'm sure puts out acceptable
products, but it has a limited production volume there; it's
slow.
My own opinion is that these low- alcohol or no -alcohol
products --let's talk about no-alcohol products for a moment:
you essentially need to have a significant sales and marketing
program. What do you do? Do you put them in with the wines,
or do you put them in with the juices? Do you keep them on the
shelf, or do you put them in the cold box? The lack of shelf
space is one of the more serious problems that the wine
industry has these days. Between the new offerings coming out
of California, to say nothing of other states in the United
States, plus imports, I don't think there is a store in the
United States that you can go to that says, "My goodness, I'm
glad you walked in the door. It just happens that I have
twenty linear feet of shelf space that I want to fill up."
It's just not happening. The number of offerings is just mind-
boggling. The fight for that shelf space is where the real
battle is. To introduce not only a new item but a totally new
concept, when it's difficult to get people tuned in to what you
have already- -what I'm really saying is that instead of a no-
alcohol wine, people may say they might as well drink juices.
It's such a totally different category.
Teiser: Juices are a lot cheaper.
Rossi: Sure, and they're easier to make. Sometimes there's a great
deal of disparity between what would seem right on paper and
what practically is achievable. Sometimes what is practically
achievable for a relatively small winery is not practically
suited as a product to pull an industry out of difficulties. I
67
think the coolers are here to stay, but I don't know if the
growth will continue to stay as strong as it has been. I would
also venture to say that in the area of blush wines, including
White Zinfandels, they may peak, but I think they've hit a
chord with the American public. They may level out and at the
same time bring consumers to try white and red table wines.
Teiser: Do you think the traditional wine types are going to stay in
about the same balance that we have them today- -sugar , acid,
and so forth? Will they taste the same?
Rossi: [pause] I would hope. And maybe it's a realistic hope that as
time goes by people will, on the traditional wines, break away
from too much sweetness and too much blandness and too much
emphasis on lack of tannin, to recognizing the place for less
sweetness and a little bit more tannin- -I'm talking good
tannins, not press wine tannins; tannins that are soft — and
would lead to an appreciation of a wine that is more aged; that
would lead to an appreciation of a white wine that has an age
tone to it without being oxidized, but at the same time doesn't
necessarily have to have the degree of freshness that seems to
be demanded today .
By the same token, I think that maybe somewhere along the
line there will be a greater appreciation of red wines.
Because as people begin to tie in food and wine they'll begin
to see that they don't always have to have a white wine. Not
that I have anything against white wines, but I personally
think that red wines to a large extent are more complex than
white wines. I don't think that's fully appreciated. But I'm
not sure that won't come about fairly soon. American industry
and American consumers seem to have the ability to compress
time in the world, if anybody can. So I don't think we have to
look for a generation or two generations to change these
things. It could happen a lot faster.
Jacobson: To what extent would you say has the popularity of the blush
wines, including the White Zinfandel, displaced the popularity
of, say, flavored wines?
Rossi: The volume of flavored wines has gone way down- -the special,
natural flavored wines. I think we have the coolers, which is
a plus. Maybe the coolers are detracting from some of the jug
wine business, which is hurting. I really haven't looked at
the statistics, but my hunch would be that the blush wines have
displaced some of the more traditional roses. So what was a
more traditional rose is now being moved into a blush type.
68
Essentially what we're saying is that we have a very, very pale
rose instead of a rose of normal depth of color.
Jacobson: Maybe I should ask what you think has accounted for the ebbing
of the popularity of the fruit -flavored wines.
Rossi: I think that the American consumer doesn't have all that much
loyalty to products. They tend to be sort of a shifting group,
and unless you catch their fancy on something that is really
solid that they are ready to stay with over a long period of
time, they'll move into a category of a beverage and then move
out of it when there's something new. And if there's one thing
that's sure on the American scene, it's new offerings in
markets in almost every area of food and beverage.
In a certain sense, the more intensely flavored something
is, the larger the risk of olfactory fatigue, not only when
you're consuming an individual bottle. When you taste a bottle
of wine that has a very intense flavor of another fruit added
to it and it's fairly sweet, the person will say, "That was a
lovely wine, but I had trouble getting to the bottom of the
bottle." Unless you take that wine and mix it with a soft
drink, which dilutes it. What I'm trying to say is that if
olfactory fatigue is established in a consumer's mind on one
bottle or two bottles, then it seems to me that would tend to
diminish his desire to buy a case.
Whereas on chablis, a person either likes it or he
doesn't. If he likes it, there's no olfactory fatigue. He
might figure, "This is 1.5 residual sugar, and I might like it
a little bit sweeter, or I might like it a little bit dryer,
but the fact is it does pretty well with whatever I'm eating."
So come the 10th of November, you put a case of wine in to
carry you through Thanksgiving and Christmas. You think
nothing of buying a case of table wine. But I think a person
would think twice about buying a case of flavored wine. That's
just my own opinion. The more intensely flavored, the faster
the olfactory fatigue, not only on one bottle but on the reuse
of the wine .
Teiser: I think Ernest Wente said that their Gray Riesling was figured
out on that basis. It didn't have a very salient flavor and he
thought it could be consumed day after day.
Rossi: Yes, I think that's true. If you make a wine that's palatable
and you're not afraid to have a fairly strong acidity with a
good, low pH, without overdoing it, then the flavor stays with
a person. There are a lot of imported wines that are quite
68a
Winery Tours
WELCOMES YOU TO OUR TASTING ROOMS
May We Suggest . . .
To most enjoy and learn about the wines of the Italian
Swiss Colony, first taste one of the White Table Wines,
then one of the Red Table Wines, and then the others
in the order listed below. Finish with a Dessert or
Cocktail wine.
White Table Wines ' -*v
Light, dry, refreshing
Rhine, Chablis, Sauterne
. Red Table Wines
Mellow, dry, full-bodied
Burgundy, Cappella, Tipo Red Chianti
Vin Rose
The "all-purpose" wine
Pink, fruity, very mellow
Aperitif fir Dessert Wines
Sweet, mellow, refreshing
Pale Dry Sherry, Sherry and Lejon Vermouths,
Cream Sherry, Tokay, Port, Muscatel
< Special Natural Flavored Wines
New, American cocktail favorites
Bali Hai, Silver Satin, Arriba, Swiss Up
Join one of our winery tours through the vast Redwood
Cellars. The time of the next tour is shown on the clock
at the end of the bar. It will be announced in the Tast
ing Room and starts outside in the courtyard. The tour
takes about 45 minutts. You'll see how wine is made
and mellowed. Your questions are always welcome.
For your convenience . . .
Candy, cigarette and soft drink vending ma
chines are provided adjacent to the Tasting
Rooms. (Sorry, we can't serve wine to minors.)
You are welcome to postcards and wine recipe
pamphlets stocked in the writing desk racks.
Since 1M1
P.O. Box 1, Asti, California
Card given to visitors at the Asti tasting room.
69
popular that don't have a great deal of flavor; they are fairly
neutral, but they seem to hold that popularity.
Teiser: Soave?
Rossi: Exactly.
Traditional and Innovative Wines of 1968-1983
Rossi: The other wines that we developed in this period of time after
1968 were the table wines. The Navalle wine was first worked
up in late 1971 or early 1972, and that was a very big move on
our part. We had a burgundy, apparently we had a claret, we
had a chablis, a Rhine, and a rose.
Teiser: Were those all actually Napa Valley grapes?
Rossi: No, they would have been, at least initially, predominantly
North Coast grapes. As time went by the percentage of North
Coast grapes that we could put in them had to drop, just from
the economics of the price of grapes from the North Coast.
Teiser: How did you happen to develop the Navalle blend?
Rossi: We decided that we had to develop table wines. Prior to the
Heublein buy-out we did have the Inglenook estate wines, and
then we had the Inglenook vintage group of wines. That was
prior to 1969. There were a number of wines that we can allude
to that we brought on the market in an effort to increase our
table wine sales. The first and foremost by far was the
Navalle wine, which was initiated in late 1971, and I believe
first sold in 1972. I can remember that occasion very clearly,
because at the time Mr. Solari was still the president of the
company and we had a discussion as to which brand name we
should introduce to complement the Italian Swiss Colony wines.
There was a considerable amount of consideration given to the
decision as to whether it should be Lejon or Inglenook Navalle.
And they decided that of the two, the Navalle would be the more
popular and would have the greater chance of success.
So we introduced Navalle wines, and at that time they were
all generics. We had a burgundy, a claret, a chablis, a Rhine,
and a rose. We introduced them and we had very good success
through the years. It lasted into the 1980s, and they're still
70
going strong. So that Inglenook Navalle brand is definitely a
success story.
Teiser: What standards did you bring those wines to?
Rossi: When we first started out they had a very high percentage of
North Coast grapes in them. Then as time went by we had to cut
down on the North Coast grapes more and more.
Teiser: Why?
Rossi: Because of the cost factor; because of the cost of the grapes.
It was just inevitable that that had to happen. We looked for
a distinctiveness of the wine, we looked for a good balance on
the wine, we looked for a certain freshness. We wanted no
faults in the wine. We wanted a wine that had a good mouth
feel in the case of the reds, and we wanted a pleasant
sugar/acid balance with a fresh, fruity aroma in the case of
the chablis, the Rhine, and the rose. Something that was
essentially pleasing to the palate of the consumer without
necessarily being cloyingly sweet. And I think we managed to
do that. I think that over the years those wines have
maintained their quality.
Teiser: You weren't trying to make those wines for aging?
Rossi: Not with the Navalle. They can be aged, but they were
essentially for the consumer to use now. We were obviously
taking advantage of the name and the prestige of Inglenook, and
we may have been subject to criticism for that.
Teiser: I think there was some criticism of the name Navalle because it
wasn't all Napa Valley grapes.
Rossi: Yes, I think so. But again, you see, if you look to a very
small group, maybe one tenth of one percent of the consumers,
that are familiar with the point that Navalle is a contraction
of Napa Valley, then one would be subject to criticism for that
group. I know there was one wine writer who took us to task on
that point. The fact is that Navalle turned out to be a brand
that represented a good value to the consumer. As a matter of
fact, the Navalle line impacted on their Napa Valley estate
wines . They turned that around and put through extraordinary
efforts to make wines of top quality. They increased the
distinctiveness of the Inglenook estate wines in order to
create a very definite distinction between the Inglenook
Navalle and the Inglenook estate. It was a difficult marketing
71
job, and I think they went about it very astutely and honestly
and just did the best they could in a difficult situation.
Teiser: When did Beaulieu come into this?
•
Rossi: They did buy Beaulieu during that period of time, in 1969.
Teiser: Did you have any contact with Beaulieu?
Rossi: No. I'll say this: they bought Beaulieu after they bought
United Vintners, and they were very careful always to keep
Beaulieu at arm's length from Inglenook and from United
Vintners, and with good reason. They did not want it to be
said that the wines of Beaulieu were the same as Inglenook or
were wines that were associated with United Vintners. Not that
there was anything wrong with United Vintners wine, but they
just wanted them to be separate entities in the public's mind.
They were always operated as separate entities . They went
after their own grapes, they had their own standards for the
grapes and the wines, their own methodology for making wine,
their own marketing organization. They were totally and
absolutely separate. As a matter of fact, Legh Knowles was
very protective of Beaulieu brand, and he did a very good job
for them in protecting Beaulieu.
Teiser: They pulled that off. People don't think of Beaulieu as allied
with any other brands.
Rossi: No.
There were other wines that we introduced during the
Heublein period in an effort to sell table wines. There was a
Heritage Colony and a line of Lejon Cask wines. They went into
the 1970s, having been started before 1970. We had a wine
called Chill Light Burgundy, which was a very light-bodied wine
that a person could serve chilled, and the chilling of the wine
did not increase the tannin taste. That was a pleasant wine,
but that didn't last beyond several years, to 1982.
Then we had another wine to compete with the Lambruscos
that were being imported from Italy that was called Borsalino.
That unfortunately didn't do too well. I think the marketing
idea could have been a little bit better on that one. They
said, "Here's Borsalino: not too sweet, not too dry; just
right." The implication was that it was compared to the
Lambruscos, but if a person didn't know what a Lambrusco was,
the comparison tended to leave people up in the air. I think
that was one wine that we could have done a better job of
72
introducing. That and the fact that it was difficult to make a
wine that was comparable to the Lambruscos .
Teiser: Are the Lambruscos that different from anything else?
Rossi: Oh, yes. The Lambrusco grapes are very heavy, very dark
grapes. They have the characteristic of being very dark but
not necessarily very tannic, so they're not very harsh. They
have high color tannins , but the other tannins are not so high
in relation to the color tannins. So they have the
characteristics of being very dark in color and still
maintaining a certain softness. But in order to maintain a
balance with the high tannin, one can increase the acidity and
also have a high level of residual sugar and it comes off as a
very well-balanced wine.
Teiser: Couldn't you do this with Missions?
Rossi: On, no, because Missions wouldn't begin to have the tannin
level. It's a very, very dark wine. Oh, maybe with something
like a Royalty or a Rubired you could approach the intensity,
but they don't have enough intensity or flavor characteristics.
Besides not having the best message to convey the merits of the
wine to the consumers, the only other problems were that we
didn't have the right grapes, the right weather, the right
soil. Other than that we didn't have any problems. [laughter]
That came in 1980, and by 1981 we had to give it up. But we
still went in where angels feared to go, and sometimes we came
out all right.
Soft Wines
Rossi: Another line of wines we had were the Lejon soft wines in 1981-
1982, where we had a burgundy, a Camay, a chablis, a French
Colombard, a rose, and a Chenin blanc. They were a pleasant
group of wines that did quite well for several years. They
tended to be a little bit sweet, and so perhaps that shortened
their life cycle. I'm not sure there was anything wrong with
the wine .
Teiser: How did you define the term "soft"?
Rossi: Well, soft probably had a little bit less tannin and a little
bit more residual sugar. They were just pleasant tasting.
73
The frosted bottle was fairly imaginative. As a matter of
fact, it was one of the best packages that we came up with.
And Heublein was strong on packaging; they had good ideas on
packaging. Not that they didn't have good ideas on product- -
they had good ideas on product, and they listened and looked
for innovation; they were responsive to it. It was a pleasure
to work with them.
Lastly, we had a group of wines called Jacare, introduced
in 1982. That was a white wine, a rose, and a white rose.
That had a fairly good life span. They were pleasant wines,
easy to drink, not all that traditional. But probably the most
distinctive thing about the Jacare was a frosted bottle. It
was a very attractive bottle, and I think that was what
attracted people to the wine. Then once they tried the wine
they liked it and kept right on going. The white rose was a
blend wine ahead of its time. The packaging there, I think,
carried it.
That gives a bit of an idea of our efforts to hold our own
in the table wine business. Of course, the amount of red wine
and white wine that was sold with the Navalle label, and the
amount of red wine and white wine that was sold under the
Colony brand was not insignificant. We were trying to have
other brands that would keep up with demand and hopefully
increase our share of market.
I think it was in 1981 that we introduced Italian Swiss
Colony varietals. As a matter of fact, that wasn't the first
time Italian Swiss Colony varietals were put out, but I think
we had a new package and a new emphasis on Italian Swiss Colony
varietals at that point. From my own part in the organization,
I had tended to taper off in the mid-1970s away from the day-
to-day quality control, and even from quality assurance. I
stayed in the area of doing some practical research, but I
stayed with the product development- -that is, the development
of new blends.
With the introduction of the ISC varietals from 1981 on, I
also started to get more and more into public relations work.
Not to the exclusion of the technical end, but a considerable
amount of my time, perhaps 20 percent, was involved in PR work,
which I enjoyed doing. I always felt it was important. I
never wanted to get away from actually doing blends at the
bench, because I felt that was what I enjoyed doing most and
hopefully did well. I didn't want to lose touch with what was
going on in the technical end of wines.
74
That about did it for the period after 1968 to 1983. One
of the last blends that I worked on were wines called Navalle
Blanc de Blanc and Grenache, which turned out to be good items
for the Navalle label.
Jacobson: I noticed from looking at R and D budgets that from 1970 on
they were doubling each year, getting quite big. Was that
Heublein's--
Rossi: Yes, they supported our R and D effort up here at Asti. Much
of that R and D effort went into these flavored wines . And
then we stepped up our quality control effort. Having started
with this in 1959, where our mission was one of quality control
and R and D--with the emphasis on the D, development- -by the
time fifteen or sixteen years had gone by it was true that our
budget ten- timed itself (without getting into specific numbers)
over that span of years. But, you see, we were doing all of
the work up here at Asti on laboratory research, but on
practical projects. Then we got into process development,
appraisal of equipment for use in the winery, and we had
developed a more sophisticated quality control team, which
included sanitation and microbiology. And, of course, we
stayed with product development.
We even had on the drawing boards drawings for an R and D
center here at Asti, but the prevailing thought at the time was
that the quality control was critically important in Madera,
because that's where the volume of the wines was being bottled.
They didn't feel that it was a good idea to have quality
control at Asti with the major portion of our business going on
down at Madera. That made a lot of sense.
I hated to give up on the idea of having that R and D
center here at Asti. What might possibly have emerged was an R
and D center at Asti, just for R and D, and then the quality
control at Madera. The difficulty is that, as R and D units
go, we weren't that large; it didn't make too much sense to
split the two functions. Because if you have a quality control
or a quality assurance center where you're set up to run a
routine analysis in some volume and with a good degree of
accuracy, if the research or the product development people
need analyses done , then those people are the ones who do the
analyses. It's better to have one group to do those series of
analyses rather than split the group.
So it was decided, then, in 1973, that this whole function
of quality control and research and development would move down
to Madera, which it did. They built a handsome and very
75
practical R and D center at Madera. It was in 1975 that
Mrs. Rossi and I moved down to Madera to be part of this group.
From 1975 until 1980 I stayed associated with this group, and
in a certain sense I'm still associated with this group. But I
prescinded from the day-to-day administration of these
functions and pretty much concentrated my effort on product
development and some research projects, not the least of which
was a project on grape color extract.
In 1980 I devoted some of my time to public relations.
Teiser: Did that include your work with marketing, then?
Rossi: Yes. Well, public relations had a two- fold function. For
example, I would go to a city and introduce a new product to
newspaper people or magazine people or radio people or t.v.
people. And at the same time I'd visit our distributor and
make a presentation to our distributor salesmen of the same
product. So when I say public relations, I'm really talking
the media as well as distributors. That for me was easy and it
was enjoyable. It's just important that you don't get too good
an opinion of yourself, because when you come home you find out
that you're not as smart as they think you are [laughs].
For further discussion of quality control, research, and development,
see pp. 113-114.
76
The Petri Period. Continued: 1953-1960
[Interview 4: 7 March 1988 ]##
Teiser: To go back to the Petri period- -how did they handle Italian
Swiss Colony staff?
Rossi: During that period of time, once they had taken over Italian
Swiss Colony, there were a number of people on the Italian
Swiss Colony staff who stayed with the company. I was one of
them. I moved from San Francisco up to Asti and got involved
in the winemaking at Asti from about 1953 until 1957, when I
became the director of research and development and quality
control .
Teiser: Were you director for all of the wineries in the group?
Rossi: Yes, for research and development and quality control. Up to
the time they asked me to be the director for quality control,
we had an in-house quality control group where the winemakers
at one plant would act as a check on the wines of another
plant. But then it got to be a little bit too cumbersome and
it was decided it would be better to put it in one place.
The thing that actually gave the momentum to start a
separate group for R and D and quality control, to be truthful
with you, is the fact that in 1957 Gallo came out with its
Thunderbird, which had all the earmarks of being a huge
success. I remember Mr. Bianchini asked me for a comparable
product in six weeks, because we just couldn't stand still and
not have something competitive on the market. So we did it,
and it worked out okay. It worked very well, as a matter of
fact. Our comparable product was called Silver Satin, a lemon-
flavored white wine.
Teiser: What was Bianchini like? Can you characterize him?
Rossi: I would say that he was a very bright person, and he had years
of experience. One way of putting it would be to say that he
knew his way around the block as far as wine was concerned. He
was a veteran in the wine business, and he had worried through
Prohibition, and when Prohibition was over he got started up
again with Petri. He was just a good, practical man. He was
quite a good wine taster. I remember being on a panel tasting
wines with him and John Daniel at Inglenook. He had a
practical approach to things. He was interested in quality,
but he wasn't interested in quality that had to be attained at
a price of being too impractical, where there would be risks
77
taken at the plant level because there would be open tanks of
wine. There was a practical way of doing things and a sensible
way of doing things, and then there was a "book" way of doing
it. Sometimes the book way isn't necessarily the most
practical way. So he was a pleasure to work with. I learned a
lot from him.
His assistant turned out to be my cousin, Bob Rossi. He
became assistant production manager in 1956. Bob, I would say,
was not a trained enologist, but again his background fitted
Bianchini's very well in that he had a lot of good common sense
and was a good administrator. He made good judgments; he saw
the forest, not the trees. So that was a good combination. We
all worked pretty well together.
Teiser: How about Benjamin Mortara?
Rossi: Benny was the money watcher, and he was a good man in that
regard because he watched the day-to-day expenses, but not at
the expense of being ridiculously penurious. But at the same
time I think he was a good offset to Louis Petri, because he
would point out to Louis --well, he knew Petri well enough that
he could speak up to him, and he would tend to curb some of the
impetuousness of Louis Petri. He'd say, "Now look, Louis, I'm
not sure we ought to go all the way that you're suggesting."
And Louis would listen to him, and Louis needed somebody to
listen to. Because, after all, Benny was on his team. It was
just a team approach, and it was almost a family approach,
where one listens to the other and gives considerations to
various aspects of a problem. And I think Bianchini was in the
group. He certainly was family, and Louis listened to
Bianchini. In some of the history write-ups Louis acknowledges
that he had a great deal of respect for Lelio Bianchini, or Bob
Bianchini, as his friends called him.
But there was no question about it that once the facts got
on the table, Louis Petri was the one that said go. And when
he said go, the rest followed. Even if there wasn't absolutely
one hundred percent agreement, once it was go, then they put
their shoulders to the wheel and decided that if there was any
way on God's green earth of making something go honestly, they
would do it.
I think another thing we might talk about for a moment is
that it was in 1957 that the S. S. Angelo Petri was launched.
I don't have an intimate knowledge of the difficulties that the
wine industry was running into at the time with respect to the
78
railroad tariffs for shipping wine east, but I think we have to
remember that in 1957 we were still shipping a preponderance of
dessert wine over table wine . And I suppose maybe the
railroads were getting too ambitious on the rates that they
wanted to charge the wine industry. So one of the ways of
beating this was to figure out an alternate way of getting wine
from the West Coast to the East Coast, and Louis Petri did
that.
He launched a project to reconvert a Liberty ship to a
wine tanker, and it was not a small undertaking. The ship had
to be put together, and they built a receiving depot at
Stockton for wines to go from points in California to Stockton
so that when the ship arrived in Stockton it could be loaded
immediately. Of course, the idea was to keep the ship going as
constantly as possible. We weren't making any money on the
ship as long as it was sitting for days in port, so within
reason the ship would come into port and would be loaded
immediately.
Then it would leave and go around and stop at a port, I
believe, in Houston, where there was another depot. Wine for
Chicago was loaded onto barges that would go up the Mississippi
and then unload at Chicago. The rest of the cargo would go
around from Houston to Port Newark, where it would unload at
Port Newark for wine to be discharged to the East Coast- -the
New Jersey and New York markets.
To my recollection, I don't believe we ever shipped any
white wine bulk. I think it was quite a bit of red wine,
particularly for the New Jersey and New York markets, for
Petri 's Pastoso line and our G&D, and much dessert wine. They
stood the voyage, I would say, quite well. We had to be
scrupulously careful about cleaning the tanks and the
sanitation, and we had our share of near heart attacks when
we'd receive a sample of white port that would have a red color
in it. We would think it was red wine that had gotten into the
white port. On closer investigation we'd find that the man who
took the sample hadn't cleaned the thief out from the red wine,
and then he took a sample of the white port and put it in the
bottle. We'd get a sample of pink-colored white port and
wonder if we didn't have forty or fifty thousand gallons of
contaminated white port. (They would not have been
contaminated in an ill health or sanitation point of view, but
from a wine point of view.) We -might have been premature in
having a blush white port by about thirty years. [laughter]
79
Teiser: As I remember, when the tanker ran into trouble you had to do
some special analysis.
Rossi: That was an interesting time. Incidentally, the tanker handled
about 2.5 million gallons of wine. I believe it was in 1960
that, just outside the Golden Gate, when it was very stormy,
the ship took waves in the stack and blew out the generators.
So the ship was afloat, really, without being able to make any
headway. It was just floating aimlessly out there on the other
side of the Golden Gate. How near it was to the Farallones,
I'm not sure. It may have been close enough that it prompted
Herb Caen to refer to the incident in his column the next day
as "Petri on the rocks" being the new "in" drink.
What they did was to send barges out and brought it back
into port, and then they sent several of us down from Asti
here to take samples of the wine . You see , in those days we
used to take samples of the wine from the tanks at Port
Stockton, and then we'd take comparable samples as holdback,
those quality tasting samples plus holdback samples from the
ship tanks. Then we would compare the two, and then we'd have
holdback samples that we'd keep for perhaps a year.
We went down and took samples from the ship tanks . Of
course, we were smelling the wine or tasting the wine or
checking the aroma of the wine, and declared that it seemed to
be fine. But that was with considerable reservations when you
think that we had all the various odors of the San Francisco
waterfront conflicting with the wine aromas. I think we could
tell pretty much; maybe we couldn't appreciate the good
qualities about the wine, but we could tell that it wasn't too
bad. The critical issue was whether or not salt water had
gotten into the tanks. We were down there in the afternoon,
and we brought samples back here to Asti- -there must have been
fifty or sixty samples- -and started to analyze them. We
analyzed both the samples from the tanks at the depot as well
as the tanks on the ship. We ran a complete analysis and found
that they coincided very closely.
But the interesting point was that just a matter of
several weeks before we had bought, for $1,500 or $2,000, our
first D U spectrophotometer. This spectrophotometer , with a
flame photometer attachment, had the ability to determine
sodiums. I don't think I'll ever forget that salt water
contains ten thousand parts per million of sodium. Now, the
normal sodium in wine would run somewhere between fifty and a
hundred parts per million. So if there was as little as a
80
Teiser:
Rossi :
1 percent contamination of salt water in the wine, with a
normal alcohol analysis of, say, twenty, you could have an
analysis of 19.8 and it would be within the limits of the
ability of the analysis- -the two tenths. It would not be solid
proof that water, fresh or salt, had gotten into the wine.
The key analysis that told the story was the sodium
analysis. Because if 1 percent salt water had gotten into the
wine, then 1 percent of ten thousand parts to the million would
be a hundred parts per million of sodium in the wine, which
would have doubled, if not more, the normal content of sodium
in the wine. Say the normal content was 75, then with a
1 percent contamination it would have been 175. So all the
comparative analysis of the samples taken from the port of
Stockton tanks, in contrast to the ship samples, were all plus
or minus maybe ten or fifteen parts per million which again
would be within the limits of the method of analysis.
In the meantime, Louis Petri had made the statement to the
papers that he was quite confident there was nothing wrong with
the wine, that it was all right. We finished our analysis
about one in the morning, and I remember we caught a two
o'clock mail truck. At seven o'clock the next morning this
report was delivered to Mr. Bianchini's desk, and of course he
was elated when he could see from the sodium analysis that we
were, in fact, 100 percent okay. Samples had been sent out to
a commercial laboratory, and samples had been taken by a
California state organization, but their analysis didn't come
through for a week or two or three later. But it was by the
next morning that they were able to be confident that the wine
was okay. That dramatically showed where instrumentation was
going to be a part of wine analysis, and it worked out fine.
That's an interesting story. We have some record of the ship
itself in Louis Petri 's interview, but not that aspect of the
event .
The side story of that, on a personal note, was that I had
brought down a heavy coat that I had in the Navy. I think my
claim to fame was that they had a shot of me smelling the wine
on board the ship for about fifteen seconds. My children were
watching t.v., and of course Dad was the big hero because they
saw me on t.v. I remember them calling to my wife "Hey, Mom,
come down and watch Dad; he's on t.v." She may have gotten a
81
glimpse of me on t.v. , or not.
the family that day.^
But I made a few points with
Quality Control
Teiser: When you took charge of quality control, did you set up the
labs and new facilities?
Rossi: No, I worked pretty much with the laboratories that were
intact. We had a good laboratory at Madera, Escalon had a good
laboratory, and Asti had a good laboratory. It was more a
question of reviewing the wines that we had in the tanks as
well as the wines that we had in the bottle, and then each
month we would bring in competitive wines and taste them. We
would make quite a comprehensive report, and it went to
everybody in the company- -the production people, sales people,
Louis Petri--so that everybody had a look. There must have
been others, other than myself, who were tasting the wines, but
it was our group that tasted them and made the comments and
took the analysis down. It gave us a very comprehensive look.
Teiser: When you have a broad group of people like that tasting, does
that make them more interested in working together on wine
quality?
Rossi: I think so. Wine quality can tend to take a second place if
you let it take a second place. If a person has a demand from
sales for, say, a given number of cases of a given wine, and
the warehouse inventory is low, that wine gets bottled in a
hurry so we don't have to back order a wine. That tends to
take top priority. So the production requirements, of
necessity, just seem to take care of themselves. And every
wine, of course, is tasted before it's bottled. But the
inherent quality that one has in one's wines, plus the
comparative quality of one's wines in contrast to competition,
just has to be kept up, and we have to know where we are.
Reviewing one's wines monthly- -or periodically; it doesn't have
to be monthly- -for quality, from an overall point of view,
could be defined as a quality assurance function.
Quality assurance pertains to an overall company policy
direction for product quality, in contrast to the day-to-day
further reminiscences of the S. S. Angelo Petri. see pp. 92-93.
82
Teiser:
Rossi:
appraisal of wines as they're bottled, which could be defined
as quality control. We didn't use to have the distinction
between quality control and quality assurance. The whole
function of quality seemed to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s,
and then by the time Heublein bought us out, why, the two
functions of quality assurance and quality control became
apparent. They wouldn't necessarily be done by the same
people, and they really were two functions.
Organizationally speaking, companies handle it
differently. Quality control could be the responsibility of
operations, as also could quality assurance. I've always felt
that the stronger way of handling it, or giving quality its
proper place in the world, is to have quality assurance and
quality control functions report directly to the president of
the company. I think that's the strongest way of doing it. It
takes its place on a one-on-one basis, or with equal
forcefulness , with people who are in charge of production,
marketing, sales, finance, or a lot of these other functions.
I've seen it written often that Ernest and Julio Gallo both
taste frequently. If that is correct, what does that imply?
Well, I've heard that Julio Gallo tastes almost every day, and
it may be that Ernest tastes almost as frequently. I couldn't
cross that "t" or dot that "i," but I think the fact that they
do a lot of tasting together says two things. First of all it
says that they're staying. right on top of their business, and
quality is absolutely tantamount to their success. If there
are any shortcomings in quality, I'm sure they want to find out
about it ahead, before the wine gets bottled and out on the
shelf.
Teiser: You say tasting takes a great deal of discipline?
Rossi: It takes a great deal of discipline. Wines have to be tasted
as unknowns, blind, and it has to be done in an environment
where no person is going to be right all the time. And even if
there are duplicate samples that are not recognized by people,
that isn't necessarily a way of trying to check on the person.
The fact is that if there are duplicate samples that are not
ranked as high with any one person or people within the group,
then perhaps the distinctions that one is looking for in a
given wine aren't as strong as one would like to imagine. It
has to be done in an environment where there's total
objectivity, and there's no sense of trying to check on the
83
tasters. If a person's worried about being embarrassed, why,
he shouldn't be there. It just has to be a given that people
are going to make mistakes, if you want to call it that.
And there are procedures for determining whether a person
is appropriate for a given wine panel or not. That's a totally
different exercise. But once a person's on a wine panel, then
there should be total trust that everybody's doing the best
they can. People will have off days, and the consensus of the
group is what will rule. I think it's important to have a
great deal of objectivity about it. It's a disaster for a less
knowledgeable chief executive officer or chief operating
officer to come in and taste a wine and either praise it to the
heavens or say it's terrible. In which case the whole panel is
biased because you're not judging the wine objectively, you're
judging your courage at whether or not you're ready to
challenge what the president says on tasting the wine. I think
most wine companies do taste objectively now, and they do have
these taste panels which they establish.
Teiser: How many people does it take to make an adequate panel?
Rossi: I think it depends on the task at hand. If you're just
reviewing a group of wines for a good reproduceability of a
given blend from one blend to another, a panel of three can do
that satisfactorily. And I wouldn't have any objection to a
panel of five. But I think if you're making a judgment on a
wine as to its appropriateness for a new product, then you're
really delving into the unknown a little bit and it's probably
better to have a littler larger panel, say either five or seven
people that would represent various areas of the company- -say,
two people from production, maybe two people from research and
development, one person from finance who's concerned about the
expenses involved, and then maybe two or three people from
marketing and sales. Then you get a consensus opinion. A
person can get the various factors that are involved on the
table early on, as to all the ramifications of a given wine.
Teiser: When you're tasting wines like that, do you discuss expenses?
Rossi: We taste them for taste, and then we discuss expenses. It's a
disaster to say that this proposed blend is fifty cents a
gallon more than the other proposed blend. The person who is
tremendously interested in quality will say this [the more
expensive one] is far and away better; and the finance man's
going to think it's a disaster, because he sees his profits
going down the tubes.
84
Petri Personnel
Rossi: If you like, I could discuss for a few minutes some of the
people who worked under Louis Petri during the period 1959 to
1969. The group that I had mentioned before were those who
were in place as Petri took over Italian Swiss Colony in the
early 1950s. Larry [Bruno C.] Solari came back to work for
United Vintners under Louis Petri in 1954. In 1962 the sales
organization was something like this: Irv Cotanch was in
charge of open state sales; Greg Lutz was in charge of
franchise states; Bob Woodward was in charge of control states;
we had a man by the name of Ed Angioni who was in charge of the
Eastern division; Joe Calabrese was in charge of Central
division out of Chicago; a man by the name of C. Toomey was in
charge of Western division. John Emmart was in charge of
advertising; Richard Knox was in charge of sales promotion;
Vince Vandevert, who wrote quite a presentable article on the
history of ISC, was in charge of public relations.
That was in 1962, and that was the group who was organized
by Larry Solari.
Teiser: What were the circumstances of Solari coming in?
Rossi: I'm not sure about that. I think Larry Solari was known to be
a good salesperson. I recall that he personally had almost a
computer-like mind. He could remember the sales position and
the relative percent of market share that we had for various
wines throughout the country, amazingly. I think that Louis
Petri just found that he was a man that he needed.
Teiser: What was his position?
Rossi: He was the vice-president in charge of sales. As I mentioned
before, he had left the company with General Deane in 1952, a
year prior to when Louis Petri had bought the company in 1953.
Larry Solari had associated himself with Guild from 1940 to
1948. He came back to United Vintners in 1954. He took over
from Louis Petri as the president of the company in 1964 and
became chairman of the board in 1969.
Teiser: What was Solari like?
85
Rossi: He was quite a personable man. He had a lot of ability on
sales, he knew the overall wine business well, and he was a
fairly ambitious person both for himself and the company. He
had good contacts around the country, and he had the ability to
surround himself with good people. I think that he kept us
really quite competitive to Gallo. And he was quite a good
taster. It was good to have a president of the company who
knew wine quality. And you could disagree with him and the
world wouldn't come to an end, and that was important.
At one time he owned the winery that Hanns Kornell has
now. It was Larkmead; he had the brand Larkmead, and that was
when he was with Italian Swiss Colony- -he bought the Larkmead
winery and built that up. He built his home there in the Napa
Valley amidst vineyards that he had planted. He was quite
farsighted; he put vineyards in in the Napa Valley early on and
did very well financially from his investments in the wine
business .
What I'm trying to say is that he had an overall
background: by the time he came back to us and worked with
Louis Petri, he had owned a winery, had put his own vineyards
in, had sold his own wine; he had worked for Guild, which was a
fairly large operation in Lodi, and he had previously worked
for Italian Swiss Colony, which handled a lot of dessert wines
as well as our premium Asti brand wines.
So by the time he came back he was a seasoned executive ,
and Louis Petri was wise enough to see that and to say that he
was the man to help build the sales. Because Louis had
committed himself. He had his own wineries, and then he had
Italian Swiss Colony wineries that he was leasing to Allied
Grape Growers. There was one major thing that would make the
whole thing collapse, and that would be if he didn't have the
sales. So Solari was a key guy, there's no question about it.
I'm not certain of the circumstances under which Louis
decided to phase out, but the fact is that he did, and then
Larry took over as president. Larry was the man at the head of
Italian Swiss Colony when we were negotiating and eventually
sold to Heublein in 1969. He was a good man to have there at
the helm of our company to guide the transition, because he
knew the game. But he wasn't at all adverse to new things. I
mean, we didn't really wait for Heublein to come out with
flavored wines, as I mentioned before; he had flavored wines
starting in 1957, and then we moved into low alcohol flavored
wines in the mid-1960s. That was all under Solari. Given the
86
fact that Heublein was at least initially attracted to the idea
of having flavored wines, it worked out well.
Through the Petri- Allied pejriod, I would say that there
were not an unreasonably great number of personnel changes on
the R and D side, or on the production side. There were people
at the plant levels that were doing a good job and that had job
security, which provided good continuity of product to the
company.
Plant Personnel
Rossi: I was the winemaker up until 1957, when I left the day-to-day
production and went into quality control and research and
development, and Min Okino made his appearance at Asti in 1957.
To relate Min's story with this company would almost take
another chapter. There's hardly any phase of this operation
that Min hasn't been involved with. From the date that he
started to the present day he has been of extraordinary value
to the company.
Teiser: What is he now?
Rossi: Min is in charge of production and winemaking for Heublein
wines at Madera. That is, he has charge of the production for
all of the Inglenook Navalle and Almaden wines. He has a very
big job, although you wouldn't know it to talk to him.
Those are some of the key people during the Petri period,
both at Escalon and at Madera.
[tape off brief ly]##
Rossi: At Asti for a short period of time we had Ed Prati, Enrico
Prati's son, as the plant manager, and Paul Heck was here for a
short time as the plant manager. Joe Vercelli came in, I
believe, in 1954, and he stayed as the plant manager until
1971. On the winemaking side we had people like Myron
Nightingale and Joe Aligretti, who were here in the 1949 to
1953 period. Doug Davis was at Asti for a time in this period.
Following Min Okino 's period as winemaker here, Bob
Delsarto, who started, I believe, in the late 1940s (and who
was the third generation in his family to be in the wine
business), became the winemaker. Then Bob Delsarto became the
87
plant manager in 1971 and remained the plant manager until
1981, when Scott Stoner, the present plant manager, took over.
Following Delsarto we had a number of winemakers who carried us
through a twenty-year span of time. One was Rob Rife; another
man was Tom [Thomas G.] Eddy, who then went to Souverain, and
from Souverain went to Christian Brothers. Another man was
John Monier, who is now with Krug. Finally, we have Kevin
McGuire, who is the current winemaker.
As laboratory directors we've had such people as George
Kay; [Edgar] "Pete" Downs, who is now with Chateau St. Jean;
Dick Arrowood, who is now with Chateau St. Jean; Ron Brown, who
I believe is still in the wine business. Bob Pike, who I
believe is with a cork supplier in the wine business, was with
us for four years .
In the research and development group early on, I
mentioned Dr. Herb Zimmermann; then we had Frank Robirds; then
we had Ferrer Filipello, who had formerly been on the staff of
the University of California at Davis. All very good men. As
I said, George Thoukis was with us for one year, which was all
too short; he was a top man.
In later years, when we moved down to Madera, there are
several people who come to mind: Gregg Hahn was a very good
man; Derek Holstein, who subsequently went to Christian
Brothers and then went to Domaine Chandon, and I believe now
has moved to Guenoc Winery in Mendocino County.
Without belaboring this too long, heading south to
Escalon, there were many good people that had been with the
company there with Louis Petri. Obviously, the key man there
was Bob Bianchini; and I would say Jim Gott, who was the plant
manager from 1951 until 1960, was also a key man. Jim stayed
past 1960. He came into San Francisco with Petri and was the
assistant production manager, and later was a vice-president in
charge of production- -a good man.
Paul Halpern would have to be mentioned as a plant manager
at Escalon, but he would also have to be mentioned as having
been in charge of the bottling operation up here at Asti, and
as a plant manager at Madera, and as a plant manager at Sanger.
I think he was one of our unsung heroes . He was a very
versatile man, hard working, very practical, and knew how to
get the job done.
88
Staying with Escalon, Joe Roullard would have to be one of
the outstanding men in the organization. He was the plant
manager from 1962 to 1983- -absolutely invaluable over that
twenty-year span of time. Joe not only ran the winery at
Escalon as the plant manager, but also during the years of the
operation of the S . S . Angelo Petri ship he organized and
coordinated the movements of wine from the various wineries to
Stockton, and then shipment from Stockton out on the ship.
We also had a very good man there by the name of Ed Moody,
who was the plant manager from 1983 to 1986. He had started
with me here at Asti in the research department several years
before that, and then he followed me down to Madera. Then he
decided he wanted to get into operations , so he went up to
Escalon in 1975 and was the winemaker from 1975 to 1983. Then
he took over as plant manager for three years.
Staying with the plant managers at Escalon, we come down
to the present plant manager, Bruce Weeks, who started as plant
manager in 1986, and is still the plant manager. He had been
transferred from Madera in 1985 to go to Escalon as the
winemaker. He was winemaker for one year. Then Ed Moody had
another employment opportunity and he left the company. So
after one year as winemaker , Bruce Weeks took over as plant
manager and has done a superb job.
We had prominent names at Escalon before my time. Max
Goldman was there between 1940 and 1946, and then apparently
Ze'ev Halperin was there for a period of time following Max
Goldman. I think Ze'ev Halperin had been at Asti for a short
period of time, but Ze'ev's contribution to the wine industry -
-he will go down in history as being a very good employee of
Christian Brothers.
The winemakers I remember at Escalon, not only with
fondness but with respect, were Tom Leong, who was there
between 1951 and 1958; Bill Witsky, who was there between 1958
and 1960; and Bert Silk, who was there between 1960 and 1961.
Ray Paolucci was the winemaker between 1963 and 1972; Miles
Karakasevic was there between 1972 and 1975. As I mentioned,
Ed Moody was there between 1975 and 1983. He was followed by
Kevin McGuire, who came to Asti; who was followed by Bruce
Weeks, who I mentioned above was there for a year. Of course,
from 1986 to the present time Harley Kakiuchi has been the
winemaker, and he's doing a very capable job. That takes care
of Escalon.
89
Heading further south to Sanger--the key management people
at Sanger plant until 1961, when it was sold to United
Vintners, was the Cella family itself, including John Cella
(II) and Phil Krum, who was the plant manager at the winery
from 1945 until 1970, a full twenty- five years. An extremely
capable man. He knew his winery, and he knew how to make
things run. Paralleling his tenure there was Aram Ohanesian,
who was the winemaker from 1946 until 1977, a thirty-year
stint. He was a good winemaker and of extraordinary value to
that plant. They were both very dedicated men.
More recently, the people that have been there were Paul
Halpern, whom I mentioned; Ken Ford was there for three years,
between 1976 and 1979; Ron Nino was there for a year (he's now,
I believe, with San Martin Winery). Adrienne Iwata was there
as the winemaker from 1977 until 1980, and from 1981 until
November of 1987 she was the plant manager. Now she's in
charge of operations in the San Joaquin Valley for Beverage
Source, and Gary Nakagawa has taken over as the plant manager.
Randy Asher, whose experience extends back to the days of
Heublein, when he was involved in the research and development
department at Madera, is currently the winemaker there at
Sanger.
As far as the Madera plant is concerned, there were a
number of changes in plant management over the years since
Heublein took charge. One of the most important people in the
stability of the Madera operation was Kasuo Sanbongi. He was
with us from 1960 until his death in 1983. He was responsible
for an enormous amount of production; it was the single biggest
plant that United Vintners had, and he discharged that
responsibility. His co-workers at the winemaker level were Joe
Rossi, who happened to have studied with Professor [Vernon L. ]
Singleton at the University of California and wrote several
very good papers on phenolics and wine- -for which I sometimes
get credit, but quickly have to correct. He is very bright,
very innovative, and carries a lot of responsibility. The
other winemaker down there who carried out a lot of
responsibility was Ray Paolucci. More recently we've had a
younger man by the name of William Matasek, who is very
capable .
Rossi: In addition to that, we've had a champagne maker turned
winemaker- -Chris Bonner. Chris Bonner is at the present time a
winemaker connected with Heublein wines. He is responsible for
90
the Almaden blends, but while I was there he was responsible
for the champagne making. Whatever he's done, he's done well,
and I think he should be mentioned as one of the outstanding
people there at Madera. .
On the managerial and administrative side, that brings up
Bill Weber, who was in charge of administration, and he's still
associated there. The top man is the vice-president in charge
of operations for Heublein, Martin D. Yocum. In my opinion
he's one of the most capable administrators that I've ever
worked with and for. He won an outstanding award last year,
the John Martin Award, from the Heublein organization, which is
worth mentioning. There was another man, W. "Pete" Holloway,
who was there for a period of time in charge of operations. He
left the company, and now he has returned to our company,
Beverage Source, as vice-president in charge of operations.
Richard Hanley, in charge of distribution and business
development, is a long-term and valued person at Madera.
To talk about the research and development and quality
control center down at Madera, I believe that in previous
discussions I mentioned that whole area of activity had been
initially assigned to me at Asti in 1957. As the organization
grew, and as it became necessary to gradually switch part of
the organization from Asti down to Madera, the man who took
over the day-to-day operation was Peter Tan. He was a man that
I hired, I suppose some twenty- five years ago, and he is now
the director of the Heublein Wines technical center at Madera.
That covers a multitude of facets. It covers quality assurance,
quality control, product development, process development,
basic research. I have to say I have a bias, because we're
very close personal friends; but bias or no, he's one of the
brightest people that I've ever run into in this organization
or most anywhere. He's been an outstanding man in this
company. He would be on a par with Min Okino, as far as his
contribution to the company would be concerned.
There are others down there: one is Hon-Kong Kwok, who
started with me up at Asti, who is in charge of the quality
assurance. There are two other men, Jim Kutschinski and Steve
Kupina, who are in charge of basic research. Then there's Joe
Alioto, who is in charge of product development and process
development. These are all men who have made significant
contributions to the company.
It's only proper that I should mention my first cousin,
Robert Rossi. Our fathers were twins. He started with the
91
company in 1946 and is still associated with Heublein today.
His career followed the lines of operations and production more
than the winemaking side, and from operations he went into
grape management and grower relations, bulk sales, and vineyard
and property management. He's certainly been a real asset to
the company over his career.
Teiser: When was it that more so-called educated winemakers started
coming into the industry?
Rossi: I would say that that happened in the late 1940s and in the
1950s.
Teiser: By then there were quite a few well -trained men coming in?
Rossi: Yes. And at the same time, 1950 was just about the time that
the American Society of Enology got started. That came into
the picture, too, where the place of the enologist or the
winemaker in the wine business was fortified.
Teiser: What does a plant manager do?
Rossi: He has overall responsibility for the plant operation- -
winemaking included.
Before it goes out of my mind, I want to mention that the
S. S. Aneelo Petri had its last voyage in 1975, so its tenure
extended past the Allied ownership into the ownership of the
company by Heublein.
Teiser: What happened to it?
Rossi: I don't know what ever happened to it.
Teiser: While we're on the subject, Louis Petri said that he found a
return cargo that wouldn't contaminate the tanks.
Rossi: Yes, there could have been. I don't know all of the products
that they had coming back.
Teiser: At any rate, he didn't return them empty or full of water?
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
92
No. As they could, they would pick up a return commodity
coming westward. The ship operation was under the direction
of a vice-president that we had at that time, Jim McManus
[James 0. McManus]. ,
Aren't there two Jim McManuses in the industry?
There's a Jim McManus [James R. McManus] who was associated
with the Brandy Advisory Board; and then our Jim McManus was in
charge of the Petri operation. He was a very nice gentleman.
He was very capable, very well organized. He did a great job
for us .
But it's true, there were return cargos. I can't really
think why the ship operation was terminated, except that I
suppose it got a little bit more cumbersome. To go back to
some of our original key dates: in the mid 1960s, table wine
began to outsell dessert wine, and then in the 1970s white
wines outsold table wines. So that meant that the main cargo
that we started with in 1957 really wasn't to be the cargo for
the S. S. Angelo Petri in the 1970s. People had to make a
decision as to whether all these white wines, which had then
become the popular drink, were appropriate to be shipped East
on a tanker or preferably bottled in California.
Would the spoilage be high?
Well, spoilage or just the absorption of oxygen and a certain
amount of oxidation, which white wines don't withstand. As I
recall, the barge at Houston was one of the facilities first
shut down. In other words, we terminated our shipments to
Chicago before we terminated our shipments to Newark. The net
of all of this is that from an industry point of view Louis
Petri was responsible, there's no question about it, for
bringing down and controlling railroad rates. He made the
capital investment, and he pulled off a feat that was sort of
flamboyant and not unlike Louis [laughs]. I don't think it was
seriously deleterious to the quality of the wines in 1957,
given the fact that three quarters of the wine was dessert
wines, with the balance red wines- -not white wines. The fact
is that he did do a service to the industry.
By 1975 weren't bulk shipment decreasing anyway?
bottlers dropping off?
Weren' t
•See Louis Petri, op. cit. . p. 36.
93
Rossi: Yes. I think franchise bottlers were dropping off; there were
fewer and fewer bottlers around the country. They just found,
with the advancements of technology, that it was better to have
the shortest line between a bulk storage tank and the bottling
facility. From the bulk storage tank in California to the
bottling facility in new Jersey was a fairly long line
[laughs]. I think it just turned out that it was probably the
sensible thing to do. But it's a key bit of history in the
California wine industry.
Three persons I haven't mentioned to date are Paul Huber,
general manager at Escalon, later at Madera, when Petri took
over Italian Swiss Colony. Then there was a man by the name of
Art Card, who was the wine chemist here a for a while. He left
and went into an allied business. Ted Yamata was the plant
manager for a while.
Teiser: Could you tell a little of the background and history of the
Madera plant?
Rossi: It was one of the larger plants that Italian Swiss Colony owned
pre-Prohibition (three million gallons). In 1915 my father and
uncle sold the family's interest in Italian Swiss Colony to the
California Wine Association. So it was then that the Madera
plant went over to the California Wine Association. Then, in
the mid- 1920s, the Arkelians bought it. They held it until
Louis Petri bought it in 1949.
Teiser: By then it was a very large plant?
Rossi: Yes. I started to mention some of the key dates under the
Petri-Allied era: in 1962 the plant size was doubled to
increase its capacity from having 75,000 tons to having 150,000
tons. Two years later more of the packaging was transferred
from Asti to Madera. Those are two key things that happened
during the Petri-Allied period.
Brandy and High- Proof
Teiser: As I remember, it had a big column still.
Rossi: Yes, we put in a large column still; it was all stainless
steel.
94
Teiser: Just one?
Rossi: They probably had more than one,, but there was one that was
exceptionally large.
Teiser: Did you make brandy down there, or just high-proof?
Rossi: They made just high-proof. The truth is, in the light of
subsequent use , we needed to put copper in the top of the
column to have a clear distillage. The sulfides would go up
the column, and if they didn't have some copper to react with,
which would make copper sulfide, then the hydrogen sulfide or
the reduced sulfide flavors would persist in the distillate
with serious off flavors. At the time we thought that an all-
stainless steel column would absolutely be the ultimate, but
the fact is that it wasn't. We were bucking the small copper
pot stills in France, and that was a mistake. With added
copper the column was a success. I remember we set up a little
glass still up here at Asti and distilled some brandy through
it, and had essentially the same flavor as what they had in the
distillate off of the column at Madera. Then we put some
copper gauze in the top of the still, and the distillate came
through nice and clean.
Teiser: Have you worked much with brandy or with high-proof?
Rossi: Well, not a great deal. I've worked with beverage brandy
blends and brandy rectifying. We used to buy some of our
brandy, and I was instrumental in setting up quality standards
for brandy. I'm not just talking the proof, but how we
distilled it and also the ingredients. We had a standard of
fusel oils, and then we had a colormetric method for analysis.
This method gave an idea of total fusel oils in the brandy, but
it did not distinguish between the individual higher alcohols -
-the propyl, the butyl, and the amyl alcohol. Today this can
be done very accurately with gas chromatography . We found that
the proportion of one higher alcohol to the other had a key
impact on the flavor of the brandy.
Another quality ingredient was the aldehydes, and we'd
also run the ester content. We did quite a bit of work on
that. Of course, the distilling material made a difference,
whether the distilling material was Thompson Seedless or
Tokays , which were used a lot for making brandy material , as
were Missions and French Colombard.
95
Teiser: Did you use them indifferently, or did you choose blends among
them?
Rossi: In Lodi we tended to have more Tokays, and down in the Fresno
area where we made some brandy at one time at Clovis , we had
Missions and Thompson Seedless.
Teiser: Was there much difference in the brandy or the distillate made
from various grapes?
Rossi: Yes, there was some difference. I would say there was a
discernible difference, even on a continuous still. But by the
time the brandy was aged for two years in the wood and was then
dumped, and we were allowed to use rectifying materials, the
differences based solely on varietal differences tended to
diminish. As a consequence, one of the dominating factors that
determined what grapes you used to make brandy was price ,
truthfully. As the years went by and we wound up finding that
we had too few white grapes, then people would use black
grapes, or red wine, to be distilled.
Teiser: You haven't operated pot stills?
Rossi: No.
Teiser: As far as high-proof is concerned, you don't age that, do you?
Rossi: No, we don't. We try to do what I think a lot of wineries do:
they try to pre-plan their accumulation of distilling material
to produce high-proof so they have enough high-proof come
August to get started on fortifying whatever dessert wines they
make early in the following season.
Teiser: So they don't have to hold it over?
Rossi: Exactly. So they don't have to wait to make high-proof to do
the fortifying that they need. Another way of putting it would
be that if a person makes a good quality white wine early in
the season, it would be a shame to use some of that white wine,
say, in late August or early September to distill into high-
proof. It's more economical to have high-proof from the
previous year to use.
Teiser: Given full control, do you make the wine to a different
standard when you know you're going to distill it than if you
were going to use it for bottling or whatever else?
96
Rossi: Not to make high-proof; yes, to some extent, for beverage
brandy .
Teiser: I think the pot still people here bring it in at a lower
alcohol content.
Rossi: They bring it in at a lower alcohol content and a higher
acidity, and that tends to make a better brandy. Brandy, to a
large extent, is a function of the quality of the wine, and I
know that in Europe they bring in the white grapes early. In
Italy they use what they call the Trebbiano; in the brandy area
of France they call it the Ugni blanc. But the interesting
point is that if a person harvests the grapes early, which will
give a lower alcohol, the person will wind up with a relatively
high proportion of fusel oils to the alcohol. Because on early
harvested grapes you get perhaps as much fusel oil at, say, ten
alcohol as you would at twelve alcohol. As a consequence, when
you distill the alcohol you have a relatively higher level of
the congeners, of the fusel oils; and if you have a higher
level of the congeners, then they in turn react with the fatty
acids of the yeast and with the acids of the wine, so that you
would tend to have a higher level of esters. With a higher
acid you also have a lower pH, and the lower pH would act as a
catalyst for the combination of these aromatic ingredients.
I think that when it's all said and done, there's good
reason for what the French are do ing --harvest ing wines earlier.
Plus the fact that in the small farms where they make wines
they may have to wait for the man who has a small, portable
still to come around and distill their brandy, and their wines
are going to keep much better if they have a high acid and a
low pH. Very often in life you think that something is done
totally in the interest of quality, but sometimes it's done to
survive and it happens to help out the quality, too.
[laughter]
97
More on the Petri Period
[Interview 5: 8 March 1988 ]##
Teiser:
Rossi :
Rossi: There are a number of things that happened during the Petri -
Allied period that I don't think we talked about yesterday.
For example, Allied purchased Community Winery in 1958.
Shortly thereafter they closed down the Shewan- Jones winery,
which is just across the road there in Lodi, and they moved the
facilities over to Community.
How did that happen?
Well, Shewan- Jones was purchased by National Distillers prior
to 1940. They actually bought Shewan- Jones before they bought
Italian Swiss Colony. I think it was quite a modern winery.
Then for some reason, in 1958 the Community winery became
available for purchase. Allied bought it. I don't recall the
specifics.
Teiser: Had it been a co-op?
Rossi: Yes.
In 1961 Cella Vineyards was brought in by Allied, and
that's when John Cella [II] came into the picture and joined
the staff of United Vintners with Louis Petri. Following the
Cella purchase, the Santa Fe brands were purchased in 1963. So
that was another group of brands that came into our fold. I
might say, going back to the Cella Vineyards- -I 'm sure John
Cella pointed out in his interview^- that they had developed a
business of selling juice in concentrate to industrial users
throughout the United States. So he had wide contacts in that
B. Cella, II, The Cella Family in the California Wine Industry.
an oral history interview conducted 1985-1986, Regional Oral History Office,
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1986.
98
area, which is fairly commonplace today. As a matter of fact,
they bottled grape juice under the Betsy Ross label. So I
would say they were very likely ahead of their time on that
particular piece of the business.
Teiser: I remember that plant was built by the Cellas.
Rossi: Yes. That plant was built by the Cellas after J. B. and
Lorenzo Cella sold Roma. I believe J. B. was the father of
Lori Cella, who married Louis Petri. I think he was the
California man, and then his brother, Lorenzo Cella, was on the
sales end and he resided in New York. Of course, Lorenzo was
John Cella [II] 's father. They were apparently two very astute
men.
[tape off]
Rossi: In that same Petri-Allied period, coming down to my own career,
it was in 1969 that Mr. Solar i changed my particular status in
the company from the director of research and development and
quality control to being a vice-president.
Inglenook
Rossi: A year later, in 1964, Inglenook was purchased by Allied Grape
Growers . I recall that at the time the volume at Inglenook was
very small; John Daniel was very quality conscious. I don't
think there were a great deal more than 25,000 to 30,000 cases
[annually] at the time, but it was top premium wine.
Teiser: All estate bottled, was it not?
Rossi: All estate. He had bottling facilities that were adequate, but
they were beginning to be obsolete in the sense that if he
wanted to expand his business to a larger volume he would
have had to make a considerable capital investment into his own
winery. At the time he didn't feel that he wanted to do that.
I believe he had two daughters who perhaps didn't show interest
in going into the wine business at that time, though I
understand now that they are going back into the business with
a great deal of enthusiasm and intend to come out with a very
99
high quality, high-priced wine.^
Going back to that time, Mr. Daniel either had the option
of putting significant capital investment into his winery or
selling, and he opted to sell. I know that we established a
taste panel for the Inglenook wines that consisted of John
Daniel, Bob Bianchini, myself, and whoever happened to be the
winemaker at that time. Al Dal Bondio, G. Deuer, J. O'Connell,
and Bob Steimiller all contributed. This panel worked over
1964 to 1969.
Teiser: John Daniel was said to have had fine perception. Could you
confirm that?
Rossi: Oh, yes. He was a very good wine taster. He was long-term in
his thinking. He wasn't the type of person who was interested
in taking shortcuts for immediate profit; he wanted to
establish himself as producing the best possible quality and
directing his efforts towards that. He was a very fine person.
It was a privilege to work with him.
Teiser: Was this your first real first-hand contact with the Napa
Valley- -when you first worked with Daniel?
Rossi: Yes.
Teiser: Do you have any general observations that you can make on the
character of the Napa Valley as a wine producing area, as
compared to northern Sonoma County?
Rossi: As I recall, in those days--1964 to 1965--I believe the
preponderance of wines that we tasted were still red wines more
than white wines. That area up in Napa Valley for the estate
wines for Inglenook was Region One or Two by Amerine and
Winkler's definition of viticultural areas. They had cooler
evenings and the wines were heavier in body, and therefore they
needed a longer aging period to develop. And fortunately the
Inglenook estate wines happened to be in a price category that
they could afford to age them for a longer period of time.
It was my first detailed experience with the effect of a
longer-term aging program, whether it was in small tanks or oak
casks or whether it was in the bottle- -more than the wines
which to that point we had produced here in Sonoma County. The
They established a winery under the name John Daniel Society.
100
Sonoma County wines were relatively lighter bodied and they
were able to be marketed younger with a greater degree of
freshness because they didn't have as heavy a tannin level.
They were more palatable younger. That isn't to say that they
couldn't be aged, but the fact is that the Napa Valley reds
were heavier in tannin, needed more age, were in a sense more
complemented with the wood that they found in the barrel.
Yes, that was my first experience.
Teiser: Does that generalization still hold for the reds of each area?
Rossi: With many more Cabernets now in Sonoma County, I wouldn't make
that judgment today.
Teiser: Was there a difference in cooperage that was customarily used?
Rossi: I think the casks at Inglenook were largely oak. It seems to
me that he had oak casks more than a large number of fifty-
five gallon oak barrels. So the smaller oak casks did a good
job. There were economic considerations there, too, since oak
casks are less expensive than oak barrels.
At that particular period of time we weren't all that
conscious of the importance of controlling oxidation in the
winery, or oxygen absorption in the winery, either for whites
or for reds. That came on a little bit later. But in any
case, with careful racking and careful handling of the red
wines they developed well.
I remember that George Deuer was a very careful winemaker,
and when he talked about fining a wine, for example with
gelatin and a little bit of tannin, he was talking a fraction
of a pound per thousand gallons. In many instances in other
winegrowing areas of California we were using amounts of fining
materials that would be half a pound to several pounds per
thousand gallons .
I was impressed that George was very careful in saying
that we may only need so many ounces of a given fining material
to a wine. I've found since that that was to be an accurate
prediction of what we were going to find to be best with finer
varietals that came later in Sonoma County. That's become a
favorite area of endeavor, and hopefully of some expertise, for
me. I try to get wines in a condition that is almost perfect
in an effort to minimize excessive use of fining materials.
That was always George's thinking, and he was absolutely right.
101
Teiser: There was a tendency a few years ago to market unfined--
unf iltered- -wine .
Rossi: I'm not in sympathy with the idea of marketing an unf iltered or
an unfined wine. I think to do that is to ignore all the
technical advances that have been made over the last hundred
years . I suppose there are some knowledgeable winemakers who
do that, but that's one practice which I question.
The Heublein Period. 1969-1983
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Did you produce a flor sherry at any period?
Yes. I don't think we produced a flor sherry to market as a
flor sherry, but as a blend. I would say it was probably in
the early 1970s.
Why didn't you market it?
Well, as I recall, by the time Heublein came around the dessert
wines were a bit on the wane. But interestingly enough, at
that time Phil Posson, who was the vice-president in charge of
winemaking for Sierra (which became owned by ERLY Industries
later) , was making flor sherry for bulk sale to other wineries
for their blends. He was acknowledged as one of the experts in
the business on making flor sherry.
Why was it used so often as a blend and so rarely bottled by
itself?
Rossi: I think it lent itself more to being a dry sherry, and it had
sort of a flat, aldehydic character, with a sort of cheesey
tone to it from the flor itself. I guess I'd characterize it
as an acquired taste. Once a person likes a flor sherry,
similar to the Spanish sherry, then it can be delightful.
Teiser: Why did Heublein buy the Petri -Allied organization?
Rossi: At that period of time the wine business was in a desirable
growth phase, and Heublein anticipated that the use of wine was
going to have significant growth over the years ahead. The
consumption trends and so forth seemed to be favorable. They
looked for good profits in the wine business and expected that
the flavored wine business was an area they could exploit.
102
Teiser: By then you had developed some flavored wines?
Rossi: By then we had developed all of our 20-percent-alcohol flavored
wines, and we also had fielded the Bali Hai. There were a
number of popular items; I think we had a demonstrated ability
not only to produce them but also to sell them. This was in
concert with their thinking. They had come off a period of the
successful introduction of the cocktail products that they had
marketed as extensions to their vodka. So they saw as a
favorable trend the growth characteristics of the wine
business, as well as their ability to put together good- tasting
products and do a good job marketing them.
Teiser: Was your organization itself pleased to have Heublein take
over? Did you think it was going to work out well?
Rossi: Yes, we were all pleased. Because we felt that Heublein had a
great deal of marketing expertise. As a matter of fact, they
did have it, and it was proven. So we felt that their
marketing expertise, with the production facilities and product
development and research capability that we had, would go in
concert and wind up being a successful venture. And I have to
say that one of the characteristics of Heublein over the years
was that they tended to be innovative and they supported
innovativeness. I don't think I ever heard a word of criticism
or put -down for coming up with a new idea. That's the kind of
an organization they were .
Teiser: Did they actually encourage innovation?
Rossi: Oh, yes, they did. They were very keen on that --on new wines,
particularly on the new flavored wines.
Teiser: They were quality minded, weren't they?
Rossi: Yes, they were quality minded, and they had good organization
for what we defined as quality assurance as well as quality
control.
Jacobson: Had Italian Swiss Colony been doing tasting room consumer
testing before, or did this come in with the Heublein era?
Rossi: As I recall, we did some consumer taste tests pre-Heublein, but
the majority of the consumer taste tests that we did in the
tasting room- -and they amounted to a significant number of
taste tests- -were done during the Heublein era. We had a whole
103
line of Annie Greensprings to develop, and there was an almost
unlimited number of variables to try to explore. We did the
product development work during the week, and we'd try out
variations on consumer taste tes£s that we would run here over
the weekends. We ran the taste test in groups of fifty, and
we'd run as many as five or six hundred taste tests in a
weekend, which gave us a very thorough look. They weren't
really designed to give very precisely definitive results, but
they tended to head us off from making a mistake.
Teiser: Why did you stop doing them?
Rossi: We stopped when we had most of our flavored wines developed.
Then when we got to the second stage of appraising the wine,
the marketing people wanted to run a controlled taste test or
panel testing- -concept testing. Sometimes they would test a
concept and then they would often test the product under more
rigidly controlled circumstances than we did.
Rossi: I think the period that Heublein came into the wine business in
1969 was characterized by several phenomena. First of all, we
were in the middle of the growth phase of the table wine
business. Furthermore, we were in the period of the switch
over within the table wine category from red wine to white
wine. Into the mid- seventies the low- alcohol flavored wines
were popular, and so we enjoyed good business there. But as
the flavored wine business tapered off after the mid- seventies ,
then we were really in a period where we had to get back to
traditional wine business.
There weren't enough white grapes in the North Coast
counties --that would be Mendocino, Sonoma, Lake, and Napa
counties --to take care of the needs for the wine industry's
white table wine business. As a consequence, white table wine
had to be made from grapes grown in the San Joaquin Valley or
the Central Coast, down in the Monterey area and San Luis
Obispo. There were new areas that had to be discovered in
order to supply the consumer with the white wine needs.
This was fine, but there were several caveats. One was
that you can't make a good white table wine without a fairly
See also pp. 60-61.
104
intensive capital investment, partly in crushing facilities,
because you have the necessity of separating the juice from the
skins before fermentation, which one doesn't have with red
wines. And the juice at the very least must be cold fermented.
Once the wine is made it's a more delicate wine and has to be
more carefully processed in order to hold the flavor. Then
when it's bottled it is important to minimize any absorption of
oxygen. As a consequence, the wine business had to make
significant capital investments in that period of time.
Heublein was included, and Heublein did make capital
investments at all of the plants. By all of the plants, I mean
at Asti, at Escalon, at our plant at Reedly, and the plant at
Madera.
Teiser: 1 think you showed me yesterday at this plant some facilities
that they had put in that must have required a good deal of
capital.
Rossi: Oh, yes. We had one building across from the main cellar for
processing white wines. That went in in 1974 and represents
maybe half a million gallons. Then we have our stainless steel
tanks that are under cover, on the top of the hill, installed
in 1978, and that represents two million gallons. And those
are just a part of the facilities that were put in at Asti.
There were even more extensive facilities put in at Escalon and
at Reedley. It was not only the tanks, but we had to have more
sophisticated filters, we had to have centrifuges and
decanters, and of course refrigeration capacity. So during
that period of time we had an increasing competitiveness in the
business, and at the same time we weren't able to rely on the
facilities that Heublein found that we had when they bought us
in 1969, so they made the investments.
Also during that period of time, from 1970 on, the price
of grapes in the North Coast counties steadily trended up. So
that was another factor that we had to cope with. Heublein had
an agreement with Allied Grape Growers to use grapes that had
been committed to Allied Grape Growers here in the North Coast
counties .
Teiser: Perhaps we should clarify just what it was that Heublein
bought .
Rossi: In 1969 they bought 82 percent of United Vintners, which
included both the wine business and the plants. In 1978 they
bought the other 18 percent.
105
Teiser: But they maintained the same contracts with Allied that United
had?
Rossi: Exactly. As time went by, really through nobody's fault- -you
can't anticipate what the future is going to bring to a person--
Asti was receiving a lot of North Coast grapes through the
years that became increasingly difficult to absorb into our
blends and get a return on the investment. My records show
that in 1977 the average price of Sonoma County grapes was $256
per ton, and five years later they were $239 per ton, having
been as high as $500 a ton in 1973. In 1980 the average price
of grapes in Sonoma County was $506 a ton. The last year that
I have the average price for is 1983, when it was $542 a ton.
Teiser: What about the grapes supplying the Reedley and other Valley
wineries?
Rossi: I don't have the prices of the grapes in the Valley, but they
were obviously less.
Teiser: Were they also going up?
Rossi: I don't have verification on this point at the moment. The
fact is that in order to maintain a profit margin, what we
needed to do was to bring Valley grapes into table winemaking,
vis-a-vis dessert winemaking. And to make a good table wine
out of grapes grown in the Valley we not only had to change the
mix of the grapes in the Valley to a degree, but we also had to
have expensive facilities, which I alluded to earlier. So
those were all concerns.
I'm not sure that Ruby Cabernet, for example, had yet made
its presence felt in the Valley, but that was an example of
where one of [Harold P.] Olmo's grapes really took over and was
a big success. And it's a widely grown and widely used grape
now.
Teiser:
Rossi:
For example, there wasn't a great deal of variation in the
tons processed for United Vintner's plants of North Coast
grapes from 1970 through 1982; in almost every year it exceeded
20,000 tons. That's not an insignificant tonnage, when you
have a trending increase in the price of grapes .
How did it relate to the profits?
It definitely impacted on our profits, because it was a very
significant cost factor.
106
Teiser: How did it happen that Heublein didn't in the end sell only
this winery and keep the Valley wineries?
Rossi: Because they wouldn't have had a buyer for this plant. This
plant has a cooperage capacity in the area of eight to ten
million gallons, we have the capability of producing five
million cases, and we have a crushing capacity of twenty- five
thousand tons. But when the winery was developed, at least
initially, by my father and uncle and Enrico Prati, Italian
Swiss Colony was making all of its wines here. After Repeal,
even in the period when it was three-quarters dessert wine and
one-quarter table wine, we made all the dessert wines, the
sherries, and the vermouths- -and the white table wines, and
then dominantly red table wines, all at this plant. So the
capacity of this plant has to be viewed in the light of
history, at least to understand it.
Going back in history just a bit, before 1940 in order to
get some relief from transportation costs of grapes from the
Valley up here, that was when the family bought the La Paloma
plant at Clovis from the Tarpey family. Subsequently, into the
1950s, when the price of grapes was less here and Petri bought
the plant, we had these grapes here not only to supply quality
wines for our own Italian Swiss Colony brands, but also for the
Petri brands. The Petri red wine needs were not insignificant,
so things were fine until the demand of history said that the
price of grapes had to be increased. That's where the
difficulty came in.
Teiser: Were the Petri wines blends of Valley wines and North Coast
wines?
Rossi: Yes, they were, at least initially. All of these wines were
blends of North Coast wines and the Valley wines. When I say
Valley wines, they're mostly Escalon, Lodi district red wines,
which were good red wines.
Teiser: Does that go for the Italian Swiss Colony label, too?
Rossi: It goes also for Italian Swiss Colony label, yes.
At the same time, I think I should mention that Heublein
was further plagued, through no fault of their own, with an FTC
suit which claimed that they were monopolizing the wine
business .
Teiser: Because they had purchased--?
107
Rossi: Because they had purchased United Vintners, and they also had
interest in Harvey's Bristol Cream, which they were importing,
as well as Lancers wines which they were importing. On the
surface it was ridiculous. They didn't have the slightest idea
of ever monopolizing the wine business, in my own opinion.
Then we had some difficulty with our labor relations with
[Cesar] Chavez; at least Allied did. As I recall, that
impacted on our business to some degree. And we had the
difficulty of trying to resolve the matter of the more
expensive grapes in the North Coast that we had committed to
Allied for. Heublein-United Vintners had increasing difficulty
working the more expensive North Coast grapes into our blends
in a way in which we could still come out with a profit. And
I'm not talking exorbitant profits. I don't know what profits
we had, but I don't think that they were looking for
unreasonable profits.
All of these things impacted during the period of time
when Heublein owned the company. We had a series of management
changes. Larry Solari was the president initially, and then
there was a man by the name of Victor Bonomo as president for a
short period of time. Then he left and Solari took over again,
and he brought in a man by the name of Dick Oster, who was very
capable. Following Dick Oster, Jack Powers came in, who is now
the chairman of the board of Heublein. Following Jack Powers
there were several others. I believe we had a man by the name
of Bob Sanders, and then for a while we had John Keller. In
1983, when [R. J.] Reynolds divested themselves of ISC wines,
Bob Furek was the president. These were all very capable
people. I must say, again, that we were in a highly
competitive business, and I could see that there was a certain
degree of distraction from day-to-day business that was caused
by these legal difficulties that presented themselves to the
scene.
Teiser: How did they interfere?
Rossi: I think Heublein has openly said this: that while they had
that FTC suit pending they were naturally conservative about
pouring capital into a company that maybe the government would
rule had to be broken up. I mean, they weren't talking small
amounts of money; it wasn't as if it was a little boutique
winery where maybe something less than a million dollars would
do it, and if you had to break up, your potential loss might be
something in the area below six figures. They were talking
108
multi-million dollar investment. And they were responsible to
their board of directors . They had other directions to put
their assets. They had to be responsible to their
stockholders. They had a public hearing, just like any other
public company.
They were extraordinarily difficult times for those men.
It was difficult enough to try to cope with the wine business,
but to cope with the wine business with these other
considerations that were impinging on their efforts and their
time and their thought made it difficult for them. I felt a
great deal of empathy for them individually, and because I
wanted the company to be successful.
Teiser: During all these years Heublein maintained their contracts with
Allied, did that also force them into high-priced grapes? Did
they have fixed contracts, or were they variable from year to
year?
Rossi: The price to be paid to Allied Grape Growers was what was
subsequently determined to be the average market price for the
various varieties of grapes in the various districts according
to the California Department of Food and Agriculture grape
report of average prices .
Teiser: But it locked Heublein into price rises?
Rossi: It locked Heublein into price rises, and when the initial
contract with Petri and Allied Grape Growers was forged I don't
think it was possible to anticipate what kind of modification
of contract could be made in order to compensate for these
industry changes that were later to present themselves, that
really nobody could foresee at the time. We just have to
recall that Allied was formed in 1949, and we're talking about
difficulties that occurred in 1979, thirty years later. I
don' t think there was anything other than truthfulness and
honesty on both sides. It was just a set of circumstances that
developed that created difficulties.
Teiser: Was Robert Mclnturf himself, the president of Allied most of
that time, a factor in this?
Rossi: He was the president of Allied Grape Growers, and I think he
felt the responsibility of filling his commitment to the
growers who had committed their grapes to Allied Grape Growers .
Teiser: Could you tell a little bit about his background?
109
Rossi: Bob Mclnturf was a grower in the Fresno area, for his own
grapes and those of his wife's family. Bob always took an
active interest in grapes, agriculture, and co-ops, so I think
he was the logical choice in Louis Petri's mind when he
initiated the formation of Allied Grape growers. Bob Mclnturf
became organizing director and president five years later, and
remained so for thirty-one years.
During the whole Petri period, Louis Petri's concept was
that he and his people would concentrate on the marketing side.
Then he would sell his assets, and subsequently Italian Swiss
Colony's assets, to the growers. Then, from the sale of the
wine made from their grapes, he would be able to return to the
growers not only the average price of grapes but, in addition
to that, from any additional funds Petri and his associates
would be paid. This was essentially accomplished by 1968.
His job was to sell wine, and once he sold the wine he had
a very strong selling point. His point obviously was: come in
to Allied Grape Growers and you'll get market price and better
than market price, and you'll get your share in the assets of
the wineries for nothing.
Teiser: It happened, didn't it?
Rossi: And it happened; he pulled it off.
Teiser:
Rossi :
That was entirely new in the industry, wasn't it?
ever heard of doing that sort of thing.
No one had
No. As a matter of fact, if he hadn't pulled it off he
wouldn't have gotten paid. His profit out of this whole caper
came from generating the funds not only for the growers , but to
pay off his contract with Allied. It took innovativeness , and
it just plain took courage [laughs], and he did it.
The Colony Label#tf
Jacobson: When did the name change from Italian Swiss Colony to Colony
brand?
110
Rossi: That's kind of a key point. You hit a nerve center with me on
that one, Lisa. Let's talk about that, but I'm at a bit of a
loss to know just exactly when that happened. It would have
happened under Heublein. I think one has to realize that this
happened in the late 1970s when Heublein was struggling with
these fairly expensive North Coast grapes and wondering what to
do with them, and how to get their investment back for the
grapes from the sale of the wine .
You recall we talked about them having introduced the
Inglenook Navalle. Some consideration had previously been
given to introducing an Italian Swiss Colony Heritage line,
with the idea of having a premium line of Italian Swiss Colony.
Somebody decided that maybe the Italian Swiss Colony and the
"little old winemaker" image didn't fit any more and that we
should modernize to the simple use of the word "Colony." So
that change was made with the idea of having a new label, a new
name, and a new face, without necessarily a total change from
the past. Colony was to be the brand, but then in the
mandatory print it indicated Italian Swiss Colony Winery.
As I recall, one of the considerations in the minds of the
marketing and administrative executives of Heublein wines was
that they felt that Italian Swiss Colony conjured an image of
inexpensive, fortified wines in flasks having been sold in the
Chicago area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This image,
they felt, maybe persisted, and it was a difficult image to
overcome to get to the point where we could generate a higher
price for table wines in the 1970s.
Teiser: By flask do you mean the raffia-covered bottle?
Rossi: No, I'm talking about a flat half pint, or half -pint flask, of
just inexpensive dessert wine. And I'm sure that was a
problem. At the same time we have to remember that during
those years there must have been a considerable amount of this
same wine sold on the New York market. But the red table wine
and the vermouth that were sold to the Italian segment- -it was
not only Italians, but that's what I'll call it- -of the New
York and New Jersey markets did not bear the name of Italian
Swiss Colony; it bore the name of Gambarelli & Davitto- -G&D. In
short, Italian Swiss Colony had a position in Chicago which was
very strong in the inexpensive dessert wines; this was not the
case in the New York market, since the brand wasn't that strong
there .
Ill
Notwithstanding the fact that the "little old winemaker"
had a tremendous appeal, I don't know how much attention was
really ever given to trying to turn the "little old winemaker"
and the saying, "You can't miss with Italian Swiss," which were
very catchy tunes [singing commercials], to the advantage of
Italian Swiss Colony wines. But for certain, when we changed
the name from Italian Swiss Colony to Colony, we may have
gotten rid of some of the inexpensive dessert wine image from
Chicago, but at the same time it seems to me that we eliminated
the possibility of using the little old winemaker, and we
eliminated the phrase, "You can't miss with Italian Swiss." So
it wasn't a cut and dried decision; there were some serious
trade-offs there. I think it is very difficult to run surveys
to come up with really definitive results as to what a name
means to certain people.
I speak with a considerable amount of prejudice, but at
the same time I must say that I believe that particular
decision was a mistake. I believe it was a mistake for several
reasons. I think that, looking at the issue from a competitive
point of view, our competitors didn't have dominantly red and
white wines in the Chicago market in the 1950s; they had their
inexpensive dessert wines in the same market as we did, in the
same flask, at the same price, with the same ignominy if you
will. It was an outgrowth of Prohibition, during which people
lost the habit of using table wines. So when our competitors
came in with table wines, we had the same opportunity with
"Colony" brand and, in my opinion, even more so with Italian
Swiss Colony.
It's a sensitive point with me. Suffice it to say that
the word "Colony" can be used for cookies, or it can be cheeses
or condominiums, or it can be a mobile trailer; it can be used
for almost anything. The distinctiveness of Italian Swiss
Colony is really lost when one drops down to Colony. The
tradition and heritage is totally lost. For that reason I
personally feel that was a mistake. There's no way of knowing
whether I'm right or wrong, but those are my sentiments.
112
Research and Development
[Interview 6: 9 March 1988 ]##
Rossi: Our research and development and quality control effort
really started in 1957. It was impacted by two
considerations. One was the fact that our main competitor,
Gallo, had introduced Thunderbird, and we could see at the
time that it was going to be a totally new, innovative, and
lasting product. This was at the time that Louis Petri was
the president of the company and Bob Bianchini was in charge
of operations. They asked me to step away from the day-to
day winemaking and chief chemist responsibilities at the Asti
plant and establish a small group at Asti to develop a wine
in a matter of weeks that was competitive to Gallo 's
Thunderbird, which we did.
At the same time, we needed to consolidate our efforts
with respect to quality control. It was my group's
responsibility here to review the wines of the company on a
monthly basis. I didn't review all of the wines every month,
but I would review them in segments . What we did was to
bring in samples of our wines from the warehouse, and also
wines from our bulk tanks and our competitors' samples. We
would taste them, evaluate them, and analyze them, and then
send out the results across the company. It was totally
objective. So we saw where we stood with respect to
competition. And if there were some improvements that were
needed, we wanted to know that up front so that we could get
back on target. Today this exercise would come under
"quality assurance."
That started in 1957, and over the better part of the
next twenty years it stayed at Asti and the organization
grew. We didn't have a great deal of sophisticated
facilities, but what we did do was to take over the
laboratory on the second floor which had been used for the
production control of the winery operations. Then the winery
built a laboratory on the first level which was then taken
over by winery personnel for the day-to-day operations of the
Asti plant. This was in 1957, 1959, 1960, along in there, so
this was actually under Petri. We had three groups with few
people: a research group, a quality control group, and a
product development group. I say group, but actually there
were one and two persons serving each function. As the years
went by and the needs seemed to increase , we expanded the
number of people. But essentially we stayed within those
three categories.
113
Teiser: Were you in charge of all of them?
Rossi: I was in charge of all three. I was in charge of research
and development and quality control as a director. Through
most of those years I was responsible directly to Louis
Petri.
Teiser: Who was in charge of product development?
Rossi: I had a man by the name of Frank Robirds doing that. And I
had several people in charge of quality control in the early
1960s. One person who was in charge of quality control for
the better part of two years was Bertram Silk. Following
Bert Silk was Peter Tan, who was also very bright. He is now
in charge of the entire research and development and quality
assurance complex for Heublein wines at Madera. He's proven
to be exceptionally valuable to the company. He had an
assistant, Hon Kong Kwok, who joined us in 1967, and he's
been with us now for twenty years. He's been very valuable
to us .
Over on the product development side, joining Frank
Robirds, was a man who was well known in the industry, Ferrer
Filipello, who was very bright, a good mathematician, and a
very good wine man. Between Frank Robirds and Ferrer
Filipello, they did all of our product development work for a
number of years and carried us through the era of the Annie
Greensprings, T. J. Swann--well, actually we were initially
involved in the 20-percent-alcohol flavored wines. Then the
12. 5-, 13-percent-alcohol Bali Hai was theirs, and as we went
further down the line we got into the Annie Greensprings and
T. J. Swann, the 9-and 10-percent-alcohol wines designed to
be competitive to Gallo's Boone's Farm line of wines.
Without trying to mention everybody, on the research
side of things one of the stars we had in the early 1960s was
Dr. Herb Zimmermann, who came to us from Berkeley Yeast
Laboratories, which was the forerunner of Scott Laboratories.
Herb was a marvelous chemist and was responsible for
developing and refining the dichromate method of analysis for
alcohol, which turned out to be very valuable, among a lot of
other things. Those were the days when the industry didn't
have a lot of instrumentation for analysis, so it was more
what is known as "wet chemistry," just plain bench work.
Herb had a facility to get a tremendous number of very good
answers with very simple equipment.
114
We had a good man by the name of Hsia Chao, who had
come to us from Taiwan. He was with us for several years
and, on a laboratory basis, developed some technology for ion
exchange which is still in use today.
And so it went. It's difficult to mention all the
people we had. For several years we had Dr. Charles W.
Nagle. I believe he came to us from Washington State
University at Pullman, and then he lived in California and
opted to go back to Washington State, where he is now. In
any case, the group grew over a period of time so that in
1969, when Heublein bought the company, our records show that
we had a group of fourteen serving those three functions.
Then it developed to the point where in 1973 we had a group
of nineteen or twenty. It wasn't an exceptionally large
group, but by that time we had added another function, sort
of as a split-off between research and product development, a
group called process development.
Prior to 1973 we had developed plans for an R and D and
quality control building here at Asti. I always felt that
had a lot of merit for the company, but that wasn't to
happen. It turned out that the top executives of the company
decided that it would be a better investment to have the
research and development and quality control functions set up
in a new building down at Madera, since Madera was really the
place where we had the major portion of our wine finishing
and bottling operations — recalling for the moment that in
1964 we had moved most of the bottling from Asti down to
Madera. I think the dominating consideration there was that
we really needed to have as much technical manpower and
ability to be put against day-to-day quality and production
problems. The product development was put on the back burner
as a second priority to the immediacy of day-to-day problems.
Further back from that were the longer-term research
projects .
In any case, in 1973 the move was made down to Madera.
Between 1973 and 1975, and even up to the late 1970s, more
and more of the administrative functions of the research and
development group were directed to Peter Tan, and I devoted
my efforts more to the product development side of things and
to special research projects. One, I might mention, was the
development of a way of making Enocianina, which is a dark
red color extract from red-black grape skins. We brought a
man in to help us do this work in the early 1980s, Dr. Anil
Shrickhande, who was a very bright person. We wound up
commercially producing and selling this Enocianina for
115
several years. It was probably the darkest and of the
highest purity of any Enocianina that was sold in the world.
I don't know of anybody who ever had a better product than
what we had.
Teiser: Does that take the place of, say, Alicante Bouchet in a
blend?
Rossi: No. It's interesting that you mention that. It's against
the law to have Enocianina on a winery premise. You can't
put Enocianina into a wine product. As a matter of fact, the
Italians have made Enocianina from Lambrusco grapes, which
are the same grapes that make the Lambrusco wine (it's
actually from the Modena area of Italy, which is north of
Bologna) . They are intensely dark grapes with very dark
skins. The characteristic that those grapes seem to have is
that they are very dark with modest tannins, at least the
coarse tannins . The tannins and the color are in the same
family of chemical components, which are known as phenolics.
It's sufficient to say that they have very, very dark color,
and the color tannins are soft to the taste. So it served to
make not only dark red juices and wines for blending in
Italy, and also for putting out the Lambrusco wines, but the
best Italian Enocianinas were made there in Modena. Of
course, if they made a single extraction of color from a
given amount of grape skins, their grape skin extract would
be considerably darker than ours, because our grapes did not
have the inherent color on a per-unit basis of the skins that
the Italian ones did. So our mission was to extract the
color and then to develop a way of concentrating the color so
that it would be acceptable commercially, which we did.
This activity is being phased out now, principally
because of the difficulties of complying with the health and
safety regulations. You can't argue against the safety of
the public, but at the same time one has to face up to the
realities of life. We made the decision that the capital
investment to try to cope with this problem disallows us
continuing with the project, which is too bad.
Teiser: Do you have other by-products like that?
Rossi: No, that would be the main one.
In any case , down to this day the research and
development effort is carried on at our technical center at
Madera, where I still have my office through the kindness of
Peter Tan and other Heublein people there.
116
Going into the late 1970s and 1980s, my efforts
continued to be concerned with product development. I think
the product development area had always been a constant in my
mind and in my efforts through my entire career. As an
adjunct to this product development work, I did direct my
efforts in doing public relations work for the company for
the Colony brand.
Somewhere in the mid-1970s the company decided to
change the name of our Italian Swiss Colony brand to Colony
brand for at least the table wines. I believe it was in 1980
or 1981 that we initiated a new series of varietal wines for
Colony, and then a year or two later we revised the generic
wines, which were the rose, the chablis, the Rhine, and the
burgundy, towards having less residual sugar. At about that
same time we had the Chilled Light Burgundy. I can remember
being on the PR trail, so to speak, talking about those
wines. Of course, it was easy for me to talk about because
I'd been instrumental in developing the wines and I was
familiar with the history of the company. They had the added
advantage of billing me as the third- generation winemaker,
which by California standards isn't too bad. (By European
standards it is not too much.)
So my activities took that course over the period of
years of Heublein ownership.
International Investigations for Heublein
Rossi: At the same time, in the late 1970s, I became less
immediately attached to the day-to-day problems and concerns
with United Vintner's efforts in California. I was assigned
to international wine projects with Heublein, and that
included two trips to Italy that I remember. As people
learned that I was going to Italy, the projects seemed to
accumulate [laughs]. One was to search for a Trebbiano to
import, which we found. Not too much came of it from a
marketing side. On that same trip I recall that Mr. Stuart
Watson, who I think was the president of Heublein at the
time, had asked me if I would look into a number of Italian
wineries that were for sale, with a view of seeing whether
any of those wineries would be worthwhile being acquired by
Heublein. Which I did, and enjoyed doing. The answer was
that I didn't find anything that I thought they should buy.
117
On another occasion I was asked to go down in February
to South America to look into their operation in Brazil, and
that was an interesting and pleasant experience.
Teiser: What is their operation there?
Rossi: They had a winery down there, Dreyer Winery, and then they
had a distillery named Drury. The winery was in Rio Grande
do Sul, near a place called Bento Gonsalvez. It was very
difficult for the grapes to come to maturity there . As a
matter of fact, it was at that particular time that Almaden
had started growing their grapes down in the very southern
part of that state, near the Uruguayan border, where the
grapes attained a better maturity. So that was their project
for Brazil for that year.
On another occasion I recall that Mr. Powers- -I'm
talking about Jack Powers now, who was the president of
Heublein- -asked me if I would go over and work with the
Hungarians to develop a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon,
because Heublein was responsible for distributing Hungarian
wines in the United States. Because of the difficulty of the
names of the grapes and the places where the wines were made
in Hungary, they were difficult to sell. I think Mr. Powers
and Ted Eisenberg, who was immediately in charge of those
sales , felt that if we could have a Chardonnay wine and a
Cabernet wine from Hungary it would help things out. As a
matter of fact, Heublein was responsible for maintaining a
certain sales level, and they were frankly having a
difficulty doing that. The truth is that I think anybody
would have difficulty doing that, with the difficulty of the
names they had on the wines .
Teiser: What did you do, then?
Rossi: Well, I worked with the people there in Hungary and came back
with blends for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. That was
a fairly difficult assignment because the people in Hungary
are behind the Iron Curtain and don't think or act the way we
do. They are much slower to react. I remember I sent the
equivalent of maybe a thousand dollars worth of our wines
over to them, just so they could taste the wines and
experience the kind of product that was doing well in the
United States. It took me the better part of a week to
encourage them to get the wines out of storage and set up a
tasting. It was inconsistent with Mr. Powers' view; he
wanted me to go over there and get it all done in a week,
[laughs] I had to tell him that sometimes you have to be
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., who had been for many years a consultant to Lancers
in Portugal, tasted in 1985 with three of the winery's key men. Left to
right: Helder Carreira, chief of the laboratory, Miller Guerra, winemaker,
Mr. Rossi, and Luis Oliveira, Cellermaster .
118
disappointed. These people just don't react the way you hope
they're going to react.
I can't say now how much impact the Hungarian wines had
on the American market or the degree of success we had, but
we did develop the wines and they were bottled and brought
here. Heublein's agreement with Hungary has since been
terminated. Of recent years, Hungary has become more
entrepreneurial in its views and action.
Probably the most extensive experience I've had on the
international front for Heublein has been my work with
Lancers, which started in 1978 or 1979, and I visited them
virtually every year since. I felt it was productive for
Heublein, productive for Lancers, and it was certainly
productive and most enjoyable for me. I think my mission
there was really to review their wines and to make
recommended revisions of their blends to make their wines
more appropriate for the American market. I've done that
over the years. For example, I was instrumental in revising
their blends in the direction of having a lower alcohol
level, with less sweetness to make them more palatable; I
worked with fining materials so that they were softer wines;
I tried to enhance the inherent vinosity of the wines as made
from the grapes in Portugal.
One of the projects involved making champagne out of a
red grape called Periquita, which is indigenous to the
Setubal peninsula where the winery is located. As a
consequence, once the base material was made, which I was
more involved in, they then went ahead and made the champagne
using a unique continuous method. The original research work
had been done in Russia, but the application of this work was
done by Seitz works in Germany. The facility there at
Lancers, Jose Maria de la Fonseca Internacional, is jointly
owned between Heublein and the family. It makes a very fine
champagne .
A more recent project was the development of Lancers
blush wine; that took place in fall of 1986. More recently I
was involved with the revision of several other blends, just
in November of 1987. ^
Teiser: I see there is a Periquita varietal wine on the market.
1For further details of recent work with Lancers, see pp. 131-132.
119
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
That Periquita varietal I believe is a red wine, and that's
made by another section of the Fonseca family. It's not
distributed by Heublein, but it's made in the immediate
vicinity.
You had nothing to do with that?
No.
ISC Sale to Allied. 1983M
Teiser:
Rossi:
Shall we talk about Heublein' s sale to Allied? I've never
been clear on what Heublein kept or still owns. I'll start
by asking the immediate causes of Heublein' s decision to sell
at that point, and what did it sell?
First off, I have to say that I wasn't privy to the
negotiations between Heublein and Allied, so I speak from a
bit of a distance as to the details.
To me, the background of the sale is simply this: that
in 1982 R. J. Reynolds bought Heublein lock, stock, and
barrel. And R. J. Reynolds, just like the other successful
tobacco companies, because of the social issues involved with
tobacco and smoking, was obviously diversifying in the
direction to de-emphasize its dependence upon tobacco. So
they decided to buy Heublein.
They bought Heublein with all the best intentions, but
then I think as they saw the business they saw how capital
intensive it was and decided that maybe the investment in
Heublein- -that for minimum give-ups in potential earnings
they could get back some of the capital they had put in the
wine business and use that capital more profitably in another
direction. So after having looked at the business, along
about spring and summer of 1983 it was decided that the
Italian Swiss Colony brand, which was the name for the
dessert wines, and the Colony brand, which was the brand name
for our table wines, as well as the Petri brand, the Annie
Greensprings brand, the Lejon brand, and the J. Bonet
champagne brand, should be sold.
They looked around for a potential buyer, and
apparently they had several people who were interested. As a
matter of fact, I know that they had several people who were
119a
OF
ITALIAN SWISS COLONY
Producers ol California'! Most Famous Win*
TIPO
RED
WHITE
MENU
SANDWICH PLATE No. 1
MoHal'i assorted cold meats on
Parisian Bread with glass of
Italian Swiss Colony Tipo Red.
Sauterne. or Sweet California
Sauterne ..... 35c
SWEET WINES
Glass of Italian Swiss Colony
California Port, Sherry, Muscatel,
with Cookies or Panetone 2UC
SANDWICH PLATE No. 2
Kraft's assorted cheese on Pa
risian Bread with glass of Italian
Swiss Colony Tipo Re<d. Cali
fornia Sauterne, Sweet Sau-
teme 35c
DRY WINES
Glass of Italian Swiss Colony
California Sauterne, Sweet Sau
terne, Burgundy, with Kraft's
cheese, bread or crackers 20c
S 0 (I V £ 0 I R faun
TIPO - (Souvenir Bottle) Red or White . . . 25c
GIFT PACKAGE — State regulation prevent making direct
shipment outside of California. Package contains: ! pint ol Tipo
Red and Tipo White, 1 pint Italian Swiss Colony Cali- A (\ ~ir
fomia Port and Sherry, 1 tenth each ol California Jj/ /J
Sauterne and Burgundy.
plus sales tax, and express
charges outside of bay district
SAV.7 • HiiJTORiCAL VALUE
Menu, Italian Swiss Colony Wine Garden at the Golden Gate
International Exposition, 1939.
A fiesta was held in 1984 to
celebrate the reopening of
the Asti tasting room after
a period of inactivity.
Booths were erected in front
of the champagne celler,
built early in the century,
and the "little old wine-
maker," featured in a once
famous company commercial,
greeted guests.
120
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
interested from firsthand information from Mr. Powers. Among
them was Allied Grape Growers. I think that Bob Mclnturf was
concerned because he wanted to maintain a home for the grapes
of his members. After considerable negotiation, in the fall
of 1983 our company, then known as ISC wines, which embraced
the brands that I just mentioned and four wineries: at Asti,
the Lodi plant, which was the Community plant, the Petri
plant at Escalon, and the winery at Reedley, which is now
known as Sanger (the previous Cella plant) --were sold to
Allied Grape Growers. It was a fairly complex financial
arrangement whereby the growers put in a considerable sum as
equity, some $12,000,000. They had financing from Heublein
of $9,000,000, and loans from two banks, Union Bank and B. T.
Commercial, approaching $40,000,000. So overall it was a
$61,000,000 deal.
I think part of the arrangement was for Heublein to
continue to bottle our wines at Madera, which was of
advantage to us because we needed somebody to bottle our
wines; and it was of advantage to Heublein because Heublein
didn't want to lose the business or the volume.
They were in effect doing custom bottling for you?
Yes. The arrangement was signed, and we got started as ISC
wines, which was the wine arm of Allied Grape Growers.
What did Heublein keep, then, in California?
Of course they kept Beaulieu. That wasn't ever in the United
Vintners picture. They kept the Inglenook estate line at
Rutherford. They kept the Inglenook Navalle line, which was
a line of blends that were made and bottled at Madera. You
recall my alluding to Jacare, which was a line of wines in
the frost-covered bottles; they kept the Jacare. They maybe
kept the T. J. Swann flavored wines line. But they did not
keep any champagne nor any of the brandies. So they slimmed
down their line.
What did they keep in the way of facilities?
The whole Madera facility was theirs and still is. And they
kept the Inglenook winery at Rutherford and Beaulieu.
What's at the Madera facility now?
Oh, it's a huge grape processing, crushing, finishing plant;
wine processing and finishing; and bottling. They would have
121
the capability of bottling well in excess of twenty million
cases a year.
Teiser: Does it do much of that for others, or some on its own
account?
Rossi: Well, subsequent to 1983, ISC wines came under the management
(I'm jumping ahead a bit) of ERLY Industries, who were Los
Angeles-based and who had owned Sierra Wines. We broke away
from having our wines bottled at Madera to being bottled at
California Growers at Cutler. That diminished the business
that Heublein enjoyed there at Madera. Their volume was not
cut in half, but it was significantly reduced. So in 1987
everybody at Heublein was overjoyed when they learned of the
acquisition of Almaden, because this virtually doubled their
potential through-put (that is, wine blending and bottling)
at Madera, and definitely tended to make the Madera operation
whole again.
Then everybody--! mean the whole world- -was a bit
surprised when within a matter of weeks it was announced that
R. J. Reynolds had decided to sell the entire Heublein
organization to Grand Metropolitan of England. But Heublein,
I understand, had business dealings with Grand Metropolitan
over the years . Among many other things , one of the
contractual relationships was that Grand Met distributed
Smirnoff Vodka in the U. K. And that's just one example of
what had preceded this whole thing.
Teiser: So that plant is now busy with Almaden?
Rossi: That plant's now busy with Almaden as well as Navalle, and
I'm glad for them that they are. I have a lot of friends who
have more job security than they had a year ago, and that's
fine with me .
Teiser: Was the Allied purchase motivated by the desire to keep a
home for their grapes, or did they think it was a good going
proposition?
Rossi: I think there was another facet to that. We had talked about
the difficulty that Heublein had with the contractual
arrangement for their grapes. With the sale of ISC wines to
Allied, the contractual obligation that Heublein had with
Allied to take the grapes was greatly diminished over a
three -year period and beyond. So they felt freer about where
they could get their grapes. They just didn't want to carry
122
that financial burden any longer, and so that was a strong
motivating factor to Heublein.
Teiser: From Allied' s point of view, did they think it was going to
be a good business deal?
Rossi: It turned out that the purchase of ISC wines by Allied in
1983 was based upon a degree of optimism that our ISC sales
would increase, when in fact they were on the decrease and we
had all we could do to stem the decrease, to say nothing of
effecting a significant increase in sales. The viability of
the whole purchase from Allied' s point of view was predicated
on the fact that our sales were going to increase. I think
the records will show that '83 and '84 were very difficult
years for the wine business in general. In that environment,
the purchase of a company on a highly leveraged basis really
had a greatly diminished chance of success. And in fact it
did not work out for the growers ; they essentially wound up
losing all of their equity.
ISC Sale to ERLY Industries. 1987
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Then ERLY Industries came in and took an option to buy the
company and took a management contract to run the company,
with the idea of infusing the company with fresh ideas. And
they've had considerable success with their own ventures, I
think particularly with the olives. They were very
successful in the olive business.
Was that the Early California olives?
Yes. Two key people there are Gerald Murphy, president of
ERLY Industries and chairman of Beverage Source (it includes
Colony wines), and Bill McFarland, who is the president of
Beverage Source now.
So they took charge and slimmed the company down.
We're running with a much smaller administrative staff. If
we've added anyplace, we've added to the sales area, which is
where we need the effort to be made.
Were your administrative headquarters shifted?
The administrative headquarters for ISC wines had been at
490 - 2nd street since 1983, and they're still there. The
123
president of the company initially was John Keller. He left
after a year or two and Richard McCombs took over as
president. He was a man who came into the company with a
very strong financial background. When ERLY Industries took
over the management of the company, Richard McCombs left his
spot as president of the company to Mr. McFarland and took on
the title of executive vice-president, which is where he is
today. In 1987, to get down to where we are currently, ERLY
Industries made an arrangement with Allied Grape Growers to
buy Colony wines, or ISC wines, so it is totally owned by
ERLY Industries. The idea is that we're now consolidating
our operations. We don't operate the plant at Lodi any more.
Teiser: What has happened to that plant?
Rossi: I believe we plan to sell it. Incidentally, R. Gerzerske was
the key man at the Lodi wineries- -first at Shewan- Jones and
later at Community for many years. As far as the winery at
Escalon, ERLY Industries leased it to Heublein with an option
to purchase at a future date. [added later: The sale was
consummated in August 1988.]
Teiser: What are they using it for?
Rossi: They're using it for the northern San Joaquin Valley grapes --
red, rose, and white wines. A lot of the wines are going
into their brands, into the Inglenook, Navalle, and Almaden
brands .
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
The company was renamed The Beverage Source in 1987. The
name was initiated because Mr. Murphy and his associates
wanted to have a name that would indicate a broader scope to
the beverage industry, since they also had an interest in
Hansen's juices as well as the wine business. The idea was
to take advantage of some efficiencies and profit
opportunities by having trucks that could be delivering
Hansen's juices and wine at the same time. It just meant
there were that many more items that our facilities could
take advantage of.
Where does Sierra fit into this?
Sierra was also owned by ERLY Industries for a number of
years. I'm not certain when ERLY Industries bought the
Sierra Wine Company, but Sierra Wine Company has a plant at
124
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi :
Tulare and another plant at Delano,
make wines for our brands .
Did Allied change the labels?
They will be operated to
Teiser:
While Allied owned the company they certainly sat on the
board of directors, and Bob Mclnturf attended many of the
executive meetings of ISC wines, but the decisions really
were left to the wine executives of ISC wines. Oh, some
labels were changed. We dressed up the Lejon label. We made
a change in the Colony label: we used to have a black band
across the bottom, and we realized that if that was displayed
on a case where just the bottom was cut out, you could see
the label but the word "Colony" was hidden; so we thought it
was wiser to put the "Colony" across the middle.
But they left all the marketing decisions to the ISC
people, subject to their approval. Because there were some
major financial decisions that had to be made: whether we
put money against advertising on, say, radio, or whether it
should go on t.v., or whether it should go towards point of
sale- -those kinds of things that involved basic financial
decisions of the company I think were certainly brought to
the board of directors, and the board of directors were the
representatives of Allied who owned the company.
They certainly had what seemed an effective advertising and
publicity campaign based upon "We got our company back," or
something like that.
I think it was reiterated effectively on t.v. I'm not an
expert on advertising, much less t.v., but the difficulty
about t.v. is that it lasts just so long and then you're
almost put in a position where you have to start another
campaign. I think it had a nice ring to it, that the company
was bought back. From the inside, I have to be frank and say
that I always felt that the t.v. ad never indicated who
bought the company back. I had people ask me if I bought the
company back. Well, that's about as far from the truth as
you can get. But that really isn't an issue, and maybe I'm
overly sensitive to that point because I've been so close to
the company for so long that I happen to be personally
sensitive to who bought the company back, but to the average
person on the street it may not make any difference.
The image on television was that one of the people working in
it had bought the company back.
125
Rossi: Yes. It wasn't as effective as it might have been, you know,
and I imagine for a lot of reasons. You can look back on
something and Sunday-morning-quarterback almost anything as
to why it didn't work. You could ask, "Who was buying the
company back?" If it was the growers in California who had
suffered adversity, at least one didn't suffer so much
adversity that he didn't have an airplane to fly his wine
home. Those are all things that people can criticize.
As I look back over the years, the industry tended to
go through a series of advertisements, I think largely
started by Coca-Cola, as to who won the most gold medals or
the most prizes.
Perhaps the first people to hit with that advertising
had some success, but then the other "me, toos" after that
didn't enjoy too much success. Then there have been any
number of campaigns where people have tried to point out the
place of wine in gracious living, and serving wine with food.
I think that could still be effective. People are looking
for something that's innovative and still has something that
will appeal to the average person on the street.
But we still have these roadblocks in the way. We have
the neo - Prohibitionists , we have the social aspects of wine
drinking. Some people are really condemning the use of
alcohol as a source of wrong instead of attacking it from the
point of view of needing better educational programs.
Distinctions of Italian Swiss Colony
Teiser: Let me go back to some unique earlier aspects of Italian
Swiss Colony. I haven't asked about the fiasco, the bottle
which I suppose came in with the Tipo Red, "Tipo Chianti"
originally. I read an article someplace about a Chinese man
who had a factory in Cloverdale that wrapped them. Were the
bottles imported from Italy originally?
Rossi: The bottles were imported from Italy originally. There's a
story on the Tipo Red that I can show you. That was one of
the early wines that Italian Swiss Colony put out around the
A grower's airplane figured in the television commercial.
126
turn of the century. Initially there was Tipo Red Chianti
and Tipo White Chianti. It was changed to just plain Tipo
Red and Tipo White. For sure it was one of the first
proprietary brands in the United States. Whether it was the
first is difficult to tell. It was certainly an
extraordinarily popular wine with restaurants. It was
strongly promoted through the years, and following
Prohibition I know my father and uncle strongly promoted Tipo
Red and Tipo White. Following the sale of the company to
National Distillers, I know that in the first years that I
was with the company in the 1950s they tried to expand the
line of the Tipo into dessert wines. That didn't work.
During the war my father and Enrico Prati had
difficulty getting the raffia, and so as I recall they had to
bring that in from Mexico.
Teiser: They also had for a time a plastic filament that they wrapped
it in, with a little plastic base.
Rossi: Yes. You are correct.
George Ng made these raffia bottles up in Cloverdale.
Later the operation was transferred to a building east of the
winery at Asti. In recent years they were brought in from
Taiwan. It wasn't well done, because the bottle didn't seat
well into the basket. If you looked at the bottle in the
case it looked nice and straight, but when you took the
bottle out, the raffia was too loose round the bottles. It
wasn't a satisfactory package.
Under Heublein management there was some difficulty as
to just exactly where to market position Tipo Red and Tipo
White wines. They didn't fit with the inexpensive jug wines,
and at the same time they weren't in the premium class. I'm
talking now of the 1970s, where we were dealing with the
Inglenook estates, which were considerably higher priced. I
don't know that this issue was ever constructively addressed
as to how we could make it go. Because with the difficulty
that Heublein had in making a profit from Heublein wines,
they did make a policy decision that the wines they were
going to emphasize were the Inglenook Navalles because they
had the greater chance for bringing down profitability than
the Colony wines did.
The Colony wines were not discarded; there was simply a
lesser allocation of promotional money, be it advertising or
point of sale material supporting the Colony wines vis-a-vis
127
the Navalle wines. That was an okay business decision as far
as I was concerned. But that left the Tipo Red and the Tipo
White as the nickels falling between the cracks. It was hard
to find a niche for them. By the time the mid-1970s came
along we weren't talking Tipo White any more; we were talking
Tipo Red. The sales of Tipo Red were not so large, though
they weren't insignificant. It wasn't judged to have
sufficient earnings potential to get the attention it needed
to survive .
Teiser: Was it phased out then?
Rossi: Then it was phased out.
Teiser: Back to the "little old winemaker" - -was that the slogan of
both radio and television ads? I think the radio jingles
started under Petri.
Rossi: I think that the "little old winemaker" and "You can't miss
with Italian Swiss" slogans were pre-Petri; they were when ray
father was running the company.
Teiser: They were effective, or at least they were surely memorable.
Rossi: Yes. I think the little old winemaker probably had as good a
recall as any advertising that was ever seen in the
California wine industry.
Teiser: It was on billboards and in printed ads. I have some old ads
from Sunset magazine. Can you describe the figure of the
little old winemaker?
Rossi: Well, he was dressed in typical Swiss short trousers with
socks that would come up to his knees . Then he had the green
suspenders, as I recall, and the white shirt, and the alpine
hat. I don't know whether there was a Mrs. there, or just a
Mr. I think maybe it was just the Italian Swiss little old
winemaker.
Teiser: When was it that you had a celebration at the Asti Winery and
brought him out again?
Rossi: That was in 1983, after we had bought Italian Swiss Colony
back from Heublein. We had a party here in early fall.
Teiser: You had a ferris wheel and tours of the winery, and the
little old winemaker was there. I took a picture of him. I
128
think it may have been when you opened the tasting room to
the public again.
Rossi: Yes.
Teiser: Was the man who took the part of the little old winemaker one
of the originals?
Rossi: I can't say, because I don't remember who he was. There were
several men. We had a number of male guides here at the time
who dressed with the Swiss costume. As a matter of fact, I
think the women in the tasting room had the maidens' Swiss
costumes, too. It was a nice idea. And the whole idea of
the tasting room, I believe, started very soon after
Prohibition. I think we were among the first that had a
tasting room in the wine industry here.
Teiser: There was some possibility that it was the first after
Prohibition, was there not? Have you ever established
whether it was the first?
Rossi :
Teiser:
Rossi :
Teiser:
No, I haven't established that. But I know that for years
and years Mrs. [Isabelle] Haigh used to have a little tasting
area in her winery down there at Simi, in Healdsburg. It
wasn't the facility that we had here, but nevertheless she
was a pleasant person and enamored herself to a number of
people. There were many people coming down Highway 101 who
wouldn't go by Healdsburg without stopping to see Mrs. Haigh.
I don't know whether Mrs. Haigh started her tasting area
before we did or not, but it was soon after Prohibition.
Roma had an early one .
Yes. And I think it was in the 1938 international exposition
on Treasure Island^- that Italian Swiss Colony had the wine
garden there. I think that was quite a large success.
This is a little folder from the wine garden. It's either
1939 or '40.
Rossi:
Teiser:
Oh, my. Look at that: you could have a sandwich for
35 cents , and a glass of wine for 20 cents .
I think the 35 cent sandwich came with a glass of wine.
the Golden Gate International Exposition.
129
Rossi: "Assorted cold meats with French bread and a glass of wine:
35 cents. Sandwich plate #1." [laughter] And for 15 cents
less you had the glass of wine anyway, but they gave you
Kraft cheese and crackers. That seems extraordinary.
Teiser: Did you go to that fair? You must have.
Rossi: Yes, I do remember going to that fair. The wine garden was
quite popular. For sure it was popular for the wine, but I
think the second reason it was popular was that people just
got exhausted walking around that fair and were delighted to
find a place to be able to sit down. [laughter]
130
Responsibilities Since 1983
[Interview 7: 4 April 1988 ]##
Teiser: When Heublein decided to sell, -you must have been given the
choice of going with Heublein or ISC.
Rossi: I wasn't totally given the choice. It was pretty much
mandated that I was going to go with ISC, because they felt
that I had been doing public relations work for ISC and that
I would be of more value to the ISC organization than I would
have been to the Heublein organization. I think there was
some logic to that, except that nobody came to me and told me
that. That was just sort of planned for me.
Teiser: How did Heublein plan to keep a month of your time a year?
Rossi: That was an arrangement that Jack Powers of Heublein and Bob
Mclnturf of Allied worked out- -that they would have a call on
my time of up to a month a year for overseas projects.
Teiser: Can you tell what those recent overseas projects have been?
Rossi: The overseas projects from 1983--in other words, from the
sale of ISC wines to Allied- -had been confined to going to
Lancers. They were essentially centered around my consulting
with them on their blends, whether it be the red wine, the
white wine, or the rose, toward satisfying the American
consumer. I consulted with them in making the base wine for
the Lancers champagne. On later visits I always reviewed the
champagne that they actually made through a continuous system
of champagne -making, which is unique in the world.
More recently, in 1986 the big project for that year
was the Lancers blush wine. I think that did fairly well
last year. This last year, in the fall of 1987, I revamped
their red wine blend and also made recommendations regarding
their white blend, and also came up with some ideas for
product line extensions for new products, which they may see
this coming year.
Teiser: Lancers has had a very strong position in the United States
market, has it not?
Rossi: Yes, they've held their volume to be quite stable. I first
started to go there in 1979. Their sales were roughly two-
thirds rose; rose was their big item. Then they had maybe
10 percent red and the balance would have been white. Given
131
the fact that the rose sales have dropped off in the United
States and the fact that Lancers imports have stayed quite
steady, I think it's a credit to the marketing department
that they have compensated for that. One of the areas that
compensated for that was the Lancers blush. More recently
their sales in the U. S. dropped off in concert with other
imported wines, but European sales picked up.
Teiser: Have you kept them in tune with American tastes?
Rossi: Yes, tried to. They're good people to work with, both on the
other end in Portugal and in Hartford. They're open to new
ideas. I've always found that with the Heublein organization
one would never be ridiculed for bringing up a new idea.
That's a very positive sort of an atmosphere to be working
in. They'll really give new ideas attention right away.
That's very encouraging. And not just the production people,
but the management people and the marketing people --if you
have a good idea it might be marketable. It's the same old
story as in many other products: the first person on the
street with the new idea is the one that gets the biggest
piece of the pie. So they've always been aggressive in that
way.
The Beverage Source. 1988##
Rossi:
In 1986 ERLY Industries took a management contract and took
an option to buy a portion of the company within three years.
It was last year, in 1987, that ERLY Industries opted to buy
the company from Allied Grape Growers in its entirety. They
did that, and that's where we are today. At the moment the
company is continuing to be under the management of Mr. Bill
McFarland, our president, and Jerry Murphy, the chairman of
the board. So our production facilities are not only the
winery here at Asti, but also the winery at Sanger, the
former Cella plant. We've closed down the winery at Lodi,
which is the former Community winery. Of the two Sierra
winery plants , the one at Tulare is working and the second at
Delano is not. Our bottling is done at Cutter at facilities
leased from California Growers.
From a marketing point of view, our thrust now is to
maximize profit potential, even with the smaller sales
volume, to try to get into lines that will show a profit
rather than just trading dollars. We need to maintain a
132
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
certain volume, for example, with Colony wines to pay for the
bread and butter (that is, to cover the fixed costs) and at
the same time generate sales in new brands. Our North Coast
Cellars wines have good price/value relationships and at the
same time will return us a good profit on the investment.
That's what our main thrust is now. All of our sales people
are geared in that one direction, and they're all optimistic.
It's a matter of whether we can beat time on it.
What about the new labels for the Beverage Source?
I just alluded to the North Coast Cellars. We bought that
brand from Souverain; it was the second brand of Souverain.
We upgraded the quality in that. The brand includes a
Chardonnay, a Sauvignon blanc, a white table wine, a red
table wine, a Cabernet, and a white Zinfandel, all fairly
successful. The varietals are more successful than the
generics. Then we brought out Royal Knight champagne to be
competitive with Cook's champagne, and that's doing fairly
well. The other champagne that we brought out, with a
traditional cork finish, is the Ranneau which has North Coast
wine in the base wine. It's quite a pleasant wine that sells
for around six dollars on the shelf. It was the only
domestic champagne that was mentioned by Tom Stockley last
winter as one of the three best six-dollar champagnes
available in the Northwest. The other two were imports. So
he was quite taken with it. It's a good wine.
Those are the directions that we are going in.
You have the little single-serving tetrapack.
Yes. They hold 187 ml- -a split size. We have those going
out under Colony brand and under another brand called
Creekside Cellars. The Creekside Cellars are the varietals,
and the Colony are the generics. I think it's a little bit
too early to predict what's going to happen with that.
People have to get used to the package. I've noticed over
the years that new ideas take considerably more time than one
generally plans for.
Then we have the Sbarboro label. The Sbarboro brand is
the top of our line. We have a number of 100 percent Sonoma
County vintage wines, a Cabernet, a Zinfandel, a Chardonnay,
a Johannisberg Riesling, a Gewurztraminer , and a Sauvignon
blanc if we think it's good enough. Last year we didn't, so
we didn't bottle it under the Sbarboro label.
133
Industry Organizations and Research Papers
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Let us ask about your industry activities. I believe you had
been to the Wine Institute's Technical Advisory Committee
meetings with your father when you were a young man.
I started with Italian Swiss Colony in February of 1949, and
it seems to me that I attended several meetings with him,
perhaps in 1948. The two things that I was impressed by
were, first, the fact that my father, who was the president
of the company, took time out from his understandably busy
schedule to attend those technical meetings . Because he was
technically inclined, and he was very quality minded. He
felt that the quality of the wine was a critical factor to
the success of the business, and it wasn't something that was
delegated to a vice-president in charge of research or
something else; he himself wanted to go there so he could
hear firsthand and ask questions about ideas that were being
expressed. I'm not quite certain when that Technical
Advisory Committee first started.
I have here that it was formed June 6, 1944.
record of it from the Wine Institute.
This is a
I see. Well, it was a fairly small group in those days, and
we didn't stand on a lot of formality. I think there may
have been twenty or twenty- five people who would attend. I
have minutes of a meeting somewhere in my files that go back
at least until 1949, and most of the subjects that were
discussed were practical subjects. Sometimes it would evoke
a difference of opinion and people would shout at one
another, but they would all wind up friends. The fact that
they did feel free to shout at each other and to get excited
brought out the differences , and in bringing out the
differences it sort of clarified the picture, whatever the
issue was. It was a good exchange medium. It was not only
an exchange of practical information, it served a second
purpose, in my estimation. It reinforced the need for a more
formal group to be formed, which turned out to be the
American Society for Enology and Viticulture.
Did it relate to that?
I believe it led to it, because the TAG presentations were
very practical. It's not that they weren't well made, it was
just that some subjects needed to have a deeper treatment.
They needed to be recognized as scientific papers on the part
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., interviewed by Lisa Jacobson, March 9, 1988.
134
of those of other scientific organizations in the world- -be
it the food technologists, the beer people, the microbiology
people, the American Chemical Society, or whatever it would
be. The enologists needed to attain the degree of
professional status which was their due.
Rossi: Most of the people on this list are industry people. That
isn't to say that there weren't some university people that
took part. But university people, of necessity, must have
high standards for the scientific papers that they write, and
they must do a considerable amount of literature research.
They often pursue a specific technical point in the light of
research work with the idea of bringing out new information
for the future. That wasn't always the nature of these
Technical Advisory Committee presentations. Not that these
weren't practical and valuable, because they were enormously
valuable .
In any case, the concepts went hand- in-hand. The
industry recognized, certainly, that because we had the
Technical Advisory Committee it was not reason not to have
the American Society for Enology and Viticulture. Because,
you see, the Technical Advisory Committee got started in 1944
and didn't really get dissolved until 1973. That was a
twenty-nine year span. The American Society for Enology got
started in 1950, so it is obvious that the Technical Advisory
Committee of Wine Institute and the American Society for
Enology and Viticulture operated in parallel with one another
for twenty- three years. So it had to work.
The second point was that there were many instances
where technical problems would be brought up at some of the
other committee meetings of the Wine Institute, and those
would be brought to the Technical Advisory Committee for
answers. Or if not for answers, at least for investigation.
A sub-committee of the Technical Advisory Committee would get
together and put together a response. So it served a very
good function.
The first meeting relative to the American Society for
Enology and Viticulture that I attended was at a place called
the Wolf Hotel in Stockton.
10f TAG chairmen; see Appendix III.
135
Telser: So far as I know, that was the first meeting.
Rossi: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the status of winemakers
wasn't really that good, wasn't really that substantial in
the wine industry. It even says here that some of the
cellar people would make more money than the winemakers, and
it was not unheard of that the winemaker would be fired
before Christmas and then rehired before the next vintage.
Well, you don't establish too much of a career on that sort
of a scheme .
Teiser: Do you remember from that early meeting at the Wolf Hotel who
took the lead?
Rossi: Charlie Holden clearly was the lead man.
Teiser: What was he like?
Rossi: I think he was a capable scientist and a good wine man, and I
think he was a persuasive person. He was certainly not
abrasive, and he was obviously forward thinking. According
to this, he had had experience with the American Society of
Brewing Chemists. He felt that the enologists, or
winemakers, could take a page out of this American Society of
Brewing Chemists. Apparently he had forwarded copies of that
journal, the Wallerstein Laboratory Communications, which was
an excellent publication, to Maynard Amerine! Once that got
started and the university people saw that there was real
interest and an opportunity for them to express themselves in
a scientific way to the scientific community at large, then
they got behind it.
Some people might have taken the small view that the
winemakers were trying to form a union. Well, I don't think
that was so. I mean, there was a far cry between trying to
form a union and trying to find yourself with a twelve -month
a year job on a professional basis. That was the point at
issue. I think it's a well-known fact that technical people
have been very important. Just as an example, in the early
years and even right up to today, Charlie [Charles M.]
Crawford, who was a very good technical man, was one of the
cornerstones of Gallo's growth. I think there would be many
other instances where that could be shown, particularly with
the technical difficulties that people had coming out of
Leonard J. Berg, History of American Society for Enology and
Viticulture [n.d. , n.p.], 1984.
136
Prohibition, with Fresno mold and all the rest of the
microbiological problems. They just had to be solved- -
oxidized white wine, champagne with copper sulfate hazes in
them, and all the things that it's so horrendous to think
about. But that doesn't mean that they didn't exist and that
they weren't problems that had to be solved.
They did have to be solved, and it was a question of
the key technical people getting together and saying, "Look,
we really have to get some recognition for winemakers as a
group, number one; and number two, we have to establish a
medium of exchange of ideas." Then it was further supported
by the fact that the university people saw the merit. Then
the people who were, after all, supporting the university and
looking to the university for enology graduates supported it
and sent their winemakers to these meetings. And they were
willing to ally themselves as an industrial affiliate of the
American Society of Enologists, which gave us some working
capital to get started with.
They started putting out a publication. The first few
meetings that we had were actually at Davis. Here is the
American Society of Enologists' first annual open meeting at
Davis, July 26, 27, 28, 1950.
Teiser: Let me ask you what your own activities were, first in the
TAG and then in the American Society of Enologists.
Rossi: In one of the early years of the American Society of
Enologists I ran for treasurer and lost the election to Roy
Mineau, who was with Roma. He was a very nice person, a
capable man; I didn't mind losing to him. In subsequent
years I was asked to run as an officer for the ASE, but I had
other activities up here in Sonoma County. First off, I was
on the school board in Healdsburg for a number of years , and
second I was very interested in the Sonoma County
Winegrowers' Association. I think I was interested in the
Sonoma County Winegrowers' Association from about 1960 to
1965, that five-year span. At the same time, this record
here shows that I was the chairman of the Technical Advisory
Committee from June 1963 to 1964. So the early 1960s, I
guess, were fairly busy years for me, and I just felt I had
to limit the number of activities that I tried to involve
myself in.
As I recall, I was in charge of the exhibits for the
American Society of Enologists for two or three years, likely
1956-1957. I remember when we first had the exhibits they
137
were almost all on card tables at the University of
California. Maybe twenty card tables would take care of the
exhibits, and now, of course, we have a huge room with
literally several hundred exhibits, some of them as large as
bottling lines and centrifuges and that sort of thing.
Talking about the American Society of Enologists, what
started with a charter membership of less than a hundred has
now virtually exploded into somewhere between fifteen hundred
and two thousand.
Teiser: Did you have special areas of interest as a member of the
TAG? Did you make reports on certain subjects?
Rossi: I think one of the most effective reports I made to the TAG
was a report on a survey I made of champagne -making in
California. I believe it was the Charmat process for
champagne -making. I presented that to one of the early
meetings of the TAG.
Teiser: That meant that everybody knew just what was going on.
Rossi: Yes, and that particular presentation was referred to as a
source of information in the chapter on champagne -making in
Amerine's book on winemaking later on.
Teiser: About when was that paper?
o
Rossi: I believe it would have been in the sixties.
Teiser: I know the committee did a lot of work on waste disposal.
Were you in on that?
Rossi: I didn't do too much work on waste disposal. I know that in
the early days of our association with Petri, through Louis
Petri's personal friendship with people at Bechtel
Engineering, we had a project with Bechtel Engineering on
waste disposal. I think from the very beginning that was
recognized as a clear-cut need for the wine industry.
Other papers that we did when we had our other
practical research work that we did here at Asti were
presented to the American Society of Enologists, and they
^-Membership had grown to 2,300 by late 1989.
2"Sparkling Wine Production by Charmat Process," June 7, 1965.
138
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
turned out to be fairly valuable,
matter of record, if you like.
Yes, please do.
We can list them as a
One of the first was in the 1960 edition of the American
Journal of Enologv and Viticulture, an article on "Low Level
Carbonation of Still Wines." That was co-authored by myself
and George Thoukis, George, of course, now being one of the
top wine men at Gallo. It dealt with factors affecting the
absorption of carbon dioxide into wine. It's kind of a
reference article.
Then there was an article that was presented in the
1963 edition of the American Journal of Enologv and
Viticulture, called "Ultraviolet Light as an Aid in
Winemaking." That was presented by myself only.
Was that a result of work that you did here?
This was done at Asti. What it really showed was the
effectiveness of ultraviolet light shining on the surface of
wine in preventing acetif ication. It turned out to be a very
practical way of controlling acetification. Where a winery
must of necessity have open tanks, where the wine is exposed
to some air, it's virtually impossible to exclude all oxygen
from the head space; acetification is a serious risk.
Another from my group was presented in the 1963 edition
of the American Journal of Enologv and Viticulture, entitled
"Studies on the Bichromate Method of Alcohol Determination."
That was authored by H. W. Zimmennann. Herb Zimmermann had a
Ph.D. degree and had worked for years with Julius Fessler at
the Berkeley Yeast Laboratories before he decided to leave
the Bay Area and come up and work at Asti. He was an
excellent researcher, and he really did more than anybody, I
believe, to promote this particular method of analysis, which
is still used in many wineries today. This, of course, was
prior to the advent of the use of gas chromatography for the
analysis of alcohol. But nevertheless, it was a very basic
piece of research work.
In the 1964 edition of the American Journal of Enologv
and Viticulture we presented a paper entitled "Alcohol Losses
from Entrainment in Carbon Dioxid Evolved during
Fermentation." This was co-authored by H. W. Zimmermann,
E. A. Rossi, Jr., and E. Wick. This showed the effect of the
physical circumstances under which fermentation occurred as
139
they impacted on alcohol losses. It explained where these
losses would be incurred in a practical winery operation.
You see, a lot of our papers at that time were very
practically oriented. There was another paper that was
presented in the 1965 edition of the American Journal of
Enologv and Viticulture entitled, "Sugar Extraction from
Grape Pomace, with a Three-State Countercurrent System."
This was co- authored by R. J. Coffelt, H. W. Berg, Paul Frey,
and E. A. Rossi, Jr. Again, you must remember that those
were the days when people were still making a lot of alcohol,
because it wasn' t until the late 1960s that the volume of
table wine overtook the volume of dessert wine being sold.
So the recovery of alcohol from grape pomace in the form of
sugar was of critical significance. That was always a
problem, the recovery of sugar from pomace. It was much
harder to recover the sugar from pomace than to recover the
alcohol from pomace. The alcohol was far more readily
soluble, whereas the sugar is always tied up in the cellular
structure of the skins. One always had the dilemma of how
long to wait for a thorough extraction. The time factor was
typical of many projects.
In 1966 we made a presentation to the American Journal
of Enologv and Viticulture called "Non- Sugar Solids in
Various Varieties of California Grapes." That was presented
by an associate of mine, Frank M. Robirds, and myself,
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr. This gave an idea of what the facts
were, what the difficulties were, in trying to predict the
amount of alcohol in the form of wine or high-proof that one
could realize starting with a given grape or series of
grapes. What we essentially tried to do was to work back to
pounds of sugar received, and then work towards pounds of
alcohol produced, and then get an efficiency factor. Of
course, the efficiency factor varied greatly depending upon
what processing had been required. This, again, was a very
practical sort of project.
Advances in the Vineyard and the Winerv##
Teiser: These were the days before there was much interest in
harvesting at low Brix?
Rossi: Yes.
140
Teiser: That came in with the increased interest in table wines?
Rossi: Yes.
Teiser: It was really quite a revolution, was it not?
Rossi: Yes, very much so. When I made that trip to Portugal to
consult with them on the making of a champagne base, they had
to bring in red Periquita grape at maybe eighteen to twenty
Brix, when all their lives, literally for generations, they
had brought it in at twenty- two to twenty- four, simply
because the higher the Brix the better the grape for red
winemaking, the higher the alcohol. The standard for red
winemaking was totally different than the standard for making
champagne base .
As better and better varieties were planted in
California, and people were more concerned about making
premium white wine and premium red wine, research and
operation interest broadened. In the 1960s there was a great
deal of understandable concern as to the effectiveness of
alcohol recovery. We considered the grape as a means of
making wine, to be sure; but, on the other hand, if
50 percent of the grape had to be made into alcohol to
fortify the wine to make a dessert wine, then we had to be
concerned with how we could effectively and efficiently
recover the material to distill into the alcohol. One can
see from the studies that we were doing in those days that
they were very much concerned with alcohol recovery.
I think the last report that I read was in 1966. In
1966 there was still more fortified wine being made than
table wine. We have to remember that 1966 was about three
years prior to the point that Heublein bought us, and it was
right about in that period of time that table wine sales
overtook dessert wine sales. Once Heublein took charge, it
wasn't that they were adversely concerned with doing research
work on basic issues for winemaking, but of necessity the
priority shifted in the direction of the development of new
products- -flavored products and natural wines. So that
really took a lot of our effort, once Heublein took over. As
a consequence, our portfolio of scientific presentations did
not extend into the 1970s, when no doubt we would have been
interested in the factors concerned with the production of
table wine .
Teiser: I've heard it said that following the revolution in the
winery, which I think you've just been describing part of,
141
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser;
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
was a revolution in the vineyard,
oversimplification?
Is that an
I think as the demand for better table wines grew, the first
place for the grapes to come from would be Napa, Sonoma,
Mendocino, in the North Coast counties, and perhaps in the
South Central Coast. I don't recall at the moment just when
the Monterey County grapes were planted.
It started about 1960, but it didn't grow to much until 1970.
Exactly. I think in well-established counties one can see
that with the price increase of Sonoma County grapes, also
the mix of grapes improved. Just as an overall figure, in
1948 there was a total of 16 thousand acres of all grapes in
Sonoma County, and they were 57 percent premium grapes. In
1983 there were 25.5 thousand acres, and they were 93 percent
premium grapes. That's forty years, which is not an
insignificant period of time, but this is a huge change. The
premium grapes, for example, in Sonoma County (to reiterate
those figures for a moment) increased over those forty years
from 9.2 thousand acres to 23.8 thousand acres. That's
almost a threefold factor, and that's just in terms of
bearing acreage only. Because superimposed on that is the
fact that with improved viticultural practices they were able
to get better yields, so the actual tons of grapes were
probably better than threefold.
Did you at the winery demand those better varieties?
part of why they planted them?
Is that
I think the people could see that the trend past 1970 was
definitely towards table wines, and then past the late 1970s
was towards white wines over red wines . This one chart
showing Sonoma County grapes acreage shows that over that
twenty-year span black grapes held about the same, but the
expansion was in white grapes. The premium black grapes in
1948 were 9 thousand acres , and they increased to 14 thousand
acres in 1983. In the white grapes, in 1948 there were 156
acres of what I designate premium grapes, and in 1983 there
were 10,500 acres. So you can see where all the effort went;
it clearly went into white wine.
That was implemented by your ability to handle white wines
better?
Oh, yes. The technology for making red wine I think was
clear in the North Coast counties for years. It was getting
142
Teiser:
Rossi:
Teiser:
Rossi:
the grapes at the right sugar level, and then the management
of the grapes during fermentation. Once the wine drained,
then you had a matter of aging the red wine --how you aged it
and how long you aged it. The red wine was hardy enough that
it pretty much took care of iOself . Whether you were dealing
with a standard red wine made, perhaps, out of Carignane, or
Petite Sirah, which was never considered a top premium
varietal but a marvelous blending wine for, say, burgundy, it
didn't make too much difference if you were making those
kinds of wines vis-a-vis making a Zinfandel or a Cabernet.
The key refinement that came in, in the late 1970s to 1980s,
about making red wine would be the impact on quality of aging
in, first, small American barrels, and, second, imported
French ones. But the basic making of the red wine was
essentially the same.
Now, in the case of white wines, there was a total
revolution. We had to learn about all of the factors that
dealt with oxidation of white wines, clarification of white
wines, the retention of the delicate flavor of white wines,
and fermentation temperatures of white wines. So the whole
technique for making white wines I'd say went through more of
a revolution than did the reds. I think that was the
technology that was developed from the 1960s to the 1970s to
the 1980s. As the consumer demanded more table wine, if they
wanted more red wines, people made better quality red wines.
Then it went from red wines, with roses brought in there,
too, into white wines, and that technology had to be dealt
with. When we wound up developing the technology on the
winemaking end, then we came to where we are today. Today we
ask what factors are involved in growing the grapes that will
impact on the quality of the wines. I believe the thrust of
the next ten years will be viticultural developments to
improve wine quality.
Let us discuss your association with the Institute of Food
Technologists and the American Chemical Society.
I've been a member of the Institute of Food Technologists and
the American Chemical Society to try to keep abreast as much
as I could on scientific developments in fields other than
enology. I can't say that I ever presented any scientific
papers or even attended any more than regional meetings .
Did you use what you learned from them?
I would say that in a general way one would receive ideas as
to what might be applicable in the wine business, whether it
144
Teiser: You were telling us off the tape that there was a long speech
in Italian.
Rossi: Mr. Cora was acting as the interpreter, and it was amusing
because the mayor of Asti would make quite an extended
comment to him, greeting me to the city. By the time it got
translated to me, Mr. Cora would say, "Mayor Vigna has asked
me to let you know that he wants you to feel most welcome to
visit the city of Asti." I'd say, "Well, thank you very
much. Mrs. Rossi and I are delighted to be here, and we're
very touched and pleased with the lovely welcome that we are
receiving today." That would get translated back to the
mayor of Asti, but it would be maybe ten times the verbiage.
I have to say that over the years I've always wondered just
exactly how this fit together, but it worked out okay,
[laughter]
I think it gives a feeling of how the Italians do
things, and maybe how other people in Europe do things. They
sent me several pictures in color that had been taken of the
people that day that we were there. They sent me two copies
of the pictures; one was just for me to show to people, and
the other picture was for me to keep. And the set for me to
keep was personally signed by everybody in the picture on the
back of each picture, which I thought was a nice touch.
To me such an occasion is part of what this wine
business is all about. I think the wine business has to have
a dimension beyond scrounging for shelf space in the
supermarkets throughout the country. It has to have a
tradition or a heritage of it, and a feel for it. There are
other and perhaps more opportunistic ways of making money
than being in the wine business. So I think that's part of
the enchantment of being in the wine business- -expressions
such as this, where it was just meant out of true friendship,
without any sentiment of reciprocity.
Teiser: The local award that you received from the wine and cheese
group here- -that's the same, is it not?
Rossi: That is pretty much the same. That came about in 1981. My
goodness, I was getting a lot of awards towards the end of
'79 and '80, '81. The Riverside Wine and Cheese Exposition
has a lovely show every year, and they would select one
person to be the wine ambassador for that year. In 1981 I
was asked to be their wine ambassador, and they carried a
very lovely article on me and on our wines. Co -sharing the
spotlight was Richard Paul Hinckle, a wine writer, who they
145
also honored at the same time; in addition to the wine man
they have a wine writer. They named the wine writer a
sommelier, so Richard Paul Hinckle was the 1981 sommelier for
the Riverbank Wine and Cheese Exposition. This is a very
nice affair; they are very warm people. It's an honor to be
in the group of people who have been previous recipients of
the wine ambassador award. They included Joe Franzia, Sr. ,
of Franzia; Tony Indelicate of Delicato winery; Dr. Maynard
Amerine of the University of California; and Louis Petri. So
I was in good company.
The only other award I could speak of is that during
the Heublein years, in 1980, they initiated an Eagle Award
for outstanding performance at United Vintners. I was one of
about half a dozen people who received this Eagle Award for
outstanding service. That meant a great deal to me. That
was a nice award, because it was recognition by my own
associates at the company.
Transcriber and Final Typist: Judy Smith
146
TAPE GUIDE -- Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
Interview 1: 22 February, 1988 (redone 4 April 1988) 1
tape 1, side a 1
tape 1, side b 8
tape 2, side a 15
tape 3, side a 20
Interview 2: 23 February 1988 26
tape 3, side b 26
tape 4, side a 31
tape 4, side b 35
tape 5, side a 42
Interview 3: 24 February 1988 47
tape 5, side b 47
tape 6, side a 54
tape 6, side b 62
tape 7, side a 64
tape 7, side b not recorded
Interview 4: 7 March 1988 76
tape 8, side a 76
tape 8, side b 82
insert, tape 15, side a 86
insert, tape 15, side b 89
tape 9, side a 91
Interview 5: 8 March 1988 97
tape 9, side b 97
tape 10, side a 103
tape 10, side b 109
insert, tape 2, side b 109
Interview 6: 9 March 1988 112
tape 11, side a 112
tape 11, side b 119
tape 12, side a 123
tape 12, side b not recorded
147
Interview 7: 4 April 1988 130
tape 13, side a 130
tape 13, side b
tape 14, side a 134
tape 14, side b 139
APPENDIX I
148
EDMUND A. ROSSI • 3445 JACKSON STREET • SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 941 II
149
,
o '
. J
L
APPENDIX II 150
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON
SONOMA COUNTY WINEMAKING
PRESENTED TO
THE SONOMA COUNTY HARVEST FAIR
SANTA ROSA
BY
EDMUND A. ROSSI, JR.
OCTOBER 6, 1984
151
SONOMA COUNTY FAIR SPEECH
INTRODUCTION: Delineate that this presentation touches on
four periods of wine industry history.
Prohibition
1919-1933 Survival
Post -prohibit ion
1933-1950 Recovery
1950-1970 Moderate Growth
1970-1983 Rapid Expansion
152
•
California winemaking predates even California's statehood,
and Sonoma wine was its first star. The Franciscan padres first
made wine from Mission grapes in 1769, and grapes were first planted
in Sonoma in 1823. But it was Sonoma 's General Mariano Vallejo
who made the first California wine worthy of note. Some of the
grapes grown at his Lachryma Montis Estate were noble varieties
brought over from Europe by his friend and neighbor, Agoston
Haraszthy, now popularly known as the Father of California
Winemaking. And, of course, Haraszthy made Sonoma the home of
California's first premium winery, Buena Vista, founded in 1857.
By 1900, Sonoma wines were winning awards and acclaim all
over the world. And that's not too surprising, considering that
so many immigrants to Sonoma came from Europe's best wine regions:
France, Germany, Spain, and especially Italy.
These immigrants brought not only knowledge, but a taste for
good wine. Civilized and temperate, they took wine with their
meals and took pride in their ability to taste and judge wine
analytically. But the Prohibition movement was afoot in the country.
Despite the best efforts of reasonable men like Andrea Sbarboro,
who founded Italian Swiss Colony, Prohibition became law in 1919.
And it had a devastating effect on Sonoma 's wine industry.
153
Before Prohibition, California wine production had risen from
22 million gallons in 1899 to 32 million gallons in 1918, reaching
a high of 45 million in 1911. The state had 700 wineries in 1918,
of which Sonoma had by far the greatest number: 256 (refer to Table
1). There were over 16,000 acres of grapes in the county. Americans
were drinking California dry wine in preference to sweet by a margin
of about 2 to 1.
Prohibition destroyed all that. By the time it was repealed,
in December 1933 (refer to Table 1), there were only 160 wineries
in all California, and an estimated 25 in Sonoma County. Worse
yet, a whole generation lost its taste for wine.
Of course people were making wine at home. Grape juice or
concentrate was sold with a packet of yeast and a warning not to
add the yeast to the juice or it would ferment into wine! Limited
winemaking for home and church use was still legal, and the "juice
Grape" industry in California was flourishing. In fact, Sonoma
grape acreage actually increased during Prohibition, to 21,000 acres
in 1930. But the new vineyards were all planted to grapes that
would ship well — tough-skinned, high-sugar varieties which would
produce wines with dark color and high alcohol. The people were
drinking wines of lesser quality, and therefore, lost the concept
of what fine wine was supposed to be. After Repeal, the number
of wineries quadrupled overnight as people rushed to meet the pent-up
thirst of our parched country (refer to Table 1). Wineries often
operated 24 hours a day. What kinds of wine were they making?
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154 -
Well, they made both table and dessert wines, but no varietals as
we know them today. There was still a bit of Zinfandel around --
but it went into blends sold as "Claret" and "Burgundy". Sometimes,
in fact, grapes were simply thrown into vats marked "red" or "white,"
and crushed and fermented that way. The wines were often on the
market within 30 days of production. Vfho had the time for aging?
At that time, only half-a-dozen of the larger Sonoma wineries
had bottling facilities; the rest were bulk operations, shipping
barrels of wine direct to customers or for bottling elsewhere.
Let me give you an idea of how one Sonoma County winery produced
and bottled wines . . . and I think by now you can guess which winery
I know best.
Our friend Joe Vercelli came to Italian Swiss Colony on
August 22, 1933. Anticipating Repeal, 38 million gallons of wine
were made during the 1933 vintage. When the great day came,
December 6, 1933, trains loaded with cases of wine which had been
stored in tanks during Prohibition rolled out from Asti.
In those days, almost all the reds were fermented in open
redwood 10 , 000-gallon tanks, punched down by hand. There was no
refrigeration or stainless steel yet, but we recognized the need
for cool fermentation of white wines. Five-foot high tanks, about
2500-3000 gallons each, were built low and wide and open to dissipate
heat for fermenting the whites. It was virtually impossible at
that time to make white wines as we know them today. Under these
conditions, we still produced four million gallons of wine a year
at Italian Swiss Colony — yes, mostly red!
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155
We were considered the very cutting edge at ISC. We had
k
eight concrete fermenters, 25, 000-gallon tanks with a redwood tube
down the middle to keep the red grape skins contained, yet in con
tact with the wine for flavor and color extraction. My grandfather,
with my father and uncle, visited Algeria in 1909 to learn hot-
weather winemaking and that's one of the techniques they brought
back. Concrete and redwood were prevalent for a good 50 years
afterward.
»
We were also the first to use a Krenz continuous pomace still.
We pioneered the use of SC<2 in conjunction with pure wine yeast
cultures, and the use of refrigeration in the stabilization of
wine. It was at this time that bentonite was first used, which
we take so much for granted today. It sounds like ancient history
now, but then it was state of the art.
In 1934, records show 804 wineries in California. But soon
the boom went bust. By 1938, the number was back down to 541.
Partly, this was due to poor-quality wine being produced. Bacterial
problems led to a government quarantine of some wines, and even
winery closures, in 1934. And remember, there was a Depression
going on -- no money available to finance new plants or improvements
During this recovery period, in fact, the whole industry
struggled for stability against continuous boom-bust cycles. In
1936, the crop was short and so prices increased, leading in turn
to an oversupply in 1937. To deal with the glut, a one-year
"pro-rate" was instituted which limited grape prices to $12 a ton
and wine prices to 7C per gallon.
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156
Who can stay in business when a year of hard work yields revenues
•
like that?
Then during World War II came the restriction of making
alcoholic beverages due to the nation's need of alcohol for war
uses. Distillers flocked to California's winelands, since their
industry had been so sharply curtailed by the Government. We wel
comed the distillers with open arms, big guys and little guys.
Wartime restrictions that disallowed the use of table and raisin
grapes for making wine contributed to increased grape prices in
Sonoma County (refer to Table 3). Immediately after the war there
was again a boom leading to oversupply and a severe bust in 1947.
Among others, Roma had been sold to Schenley Industries and Paul
Masson was bought by Seagrams, Italian Swiss Colony was bought
by National Distillers in 1942. Once I asked my father why he
had sold the winery. His answer was characteristically pragmatic
-- "Because we had a buyer I"
As you can imagine, all these ups and downs did not have
a healthy effect on Sonoma growers and winemakers . Wine grape
acreage stayed flat or decreased for decades at a time. You can
see the general relationship between grape prices and acreage in
this chart (#3) behind me.
Notice in 1935 (refer to Table 3), grape prices hit a low
of $10 per ton. Except for the war years, acreage went downhill
for quite awhile: Sonoma grape acreage decreased from about 20,000
acres to about 11,000 acres in 1960.
- 6 -
157
But despite all the hardships, there was progress being made.
Scientific investigation in viticulture and enology was stepped
up at Berkeley and UC Davis, under the guidance of people like
Cruess, Joselyn, Amerine and Winkler. Dr. Cruess had followed
Professor Bioletti at Berkeley with whom my father and uncle had
studied. The UC Bulletins on making table wine, dessert wine and
brandy were among the first definitive guidelines to the wine
industry in California. I had the great good fortune to study at
Davis during the 40 's for what would now be considered a short time.
I had brought back some ideas about analyzing wine, not only with
the senses, but through instrumentation and chemical analysis.
I remember two incidents that illustrated how these notions
could prove useful. Once, Elbert Brown, the Research/Quality Control
man, and I went over to the old Shewan- Jones winery at Lodi to taste
some white wines Myron Nightingale had made for the Lejon label.
With us was a former competitive wrestler at UC -- named Lyman Cash,
who was the chemist at Asti. We asked him to taste the wine and
give us his opinion. He took a sip, swished it around, spit it
out -- then he said he thought the wine was somewhat oxidized.
Nightingale was getting more worried by the minute. If this guy
didn't like the wine, who'd argue with him? Then Cash kind of
grinned and said, "Now let me get rid of this plug of chewing tobacco
and get a real taste!" That broke up the party! So much for
delicate sensory perceptions. I wish to inject that I look back
with much fondness and gratitude to Elbert Brown. He was the leading
technical man in the industry during this period.
- 7 -
158
Another time, the SS Angelo Petri -- yes we actually had a
tanker full of wines for shipping to the East Coast — ran aground
just out of the San Francisco Bay. Herb Caen called it "wine on
the rocks." Anyway, we worried that the wine had been contaminated
with seawater. Petri tasted it and thought it was OK, but with
all the conflicting odors coming off the bay, it was pretty hard
to taste anything. We had to turn to instrumentation. At last,
our new spectrophometer was pressed into service! After a feverish
night of sodium analysis and other tests, the wine was pronounced
pure and drinkable, and duly reported so in the next day's papers.
But not in Caen's column, of course! Before leaving this story,
it is important to note that the SS Angelo Petri was put into
service to resist increasing rail rates. This move was effective
and, of course, benefited the California wine industry.
At the same time the scientific precepts of UC Davis were
gaining acceptance, professional organizations were contributing
to the industry's knowledge and stability. As far back as 1934,
we had the Wine Institute, formed by Harry Caddow and Leon Adams
(among others) as a direct descendant of the Grapes Growers League
of Prohibition days. In 1938, the Wine Advisory Board was formed
under a California State Marketing Order. In 1942, Louis Foppiano
founded the Sonoma County Wine Growers Association. In the early
50's, the American Society of Enologists was formed with 20 charter
members . Our idea was to create a forum for exchanging ideas ,
and we hoped thereby to improve the quality of our wine so it would
be comparable to the best European imports. It worked. Through
the A.S.E. came reports on developments like the control of
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159
oxidation, the effective use of centrifugation. more use of stain
less steel fermentation, improved vineyard practices, and closer
control of the aging process by using different sizes and types
of barrels. But perhaps more important, we started thinking about
our markets and potential customers. We winemakers began to think
like marketers - to respond to the public, and to contribute to
their wine education.
By 1950 (refer to Table 2), while total wine sales approached
150 million gallons, the table wine market was still in the base
ment, figuratively. We made jug reds for Italian-Americans and
dessert wines, sweet and high alcohol — the latter often for people
who drank for effect. Wine had a bad name in America. It was still
associated with hard liquor and often distributed by the same people.
Since people in the distribution system made more money in spirits,
why should they learn about wine? It wasn't until 1954 that the
word "fortified" was eliminated from federal regulations. Though
we graduated from making the harsh, coarse wines of the late 1930 's
to the "sweet vinos," (from Table 2) it is apparent that dessert
wines significantly outsold table wines throughout the 1950' s.
But we had a secret weapon — so secret not even we knew about
it. By the early 60 's the Baby Boomers were coming of age. And
not only did we have the means to analyze the wines -- we could
also analyze people's reactions to them, with market research. This
was a huge market, just outgrowing soda pop and looking for something
with that sweetness, that fizz, and a little bit of jolt. Thus were
born the special naturals — otherwise known as refreshment or "pop"
wines .
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160
My first assignment as Research Director at ISC in 1957 was
to come up with a product tailored to match the appeal of Gallo's
Thunderbird. Our entry was Silver Satin, which tasted like a mix
of white Port and lemon juice, with 20% alcohol. Over a period
years came our Bali Hai at 12% and finally, the Annie Green Springs,
Boone's Farms and TJ Swanns , apple-based wines with a low 9%
alcohol. The special naturals really pushed up table wine sales
through the mid-60 's and 70's. By 1974, Americans drank 50 million
gallons of special naturals. That's 250 million bottles — more
than one bottle for every man, woman and child in the country.
We finally could control oxidation, and the "pop" wines, chilled
and served as cocktails, helped lay the groundwork for more accept
ance of white wines. Table wine sales, at last, were looking up;
in fact, they more than doubled between 1963 and 1970. In 1968,
more table wine was sold than dessert wine for the first time in
the post-prohibition era.
Looking at our charts (#2 and #4), you'll notice that with
this consumption boom came increased new plantings in Sonoma County
(refer to Table 4). In 1971, for the first time, new vines reached
over 2000 acres. It peaked in 1975, with over 8000 non-bearing
acres. Prices soared ... in fact, the real growth in new vines
in Sonoma started when the price per ton consistently broke $200.
Of course, I'm talking average price per ton. And thanks to im
proved vineyard practices developed at Davis, and here in Sonoma
County by Bob Sisson, yield per acre was increasing (refer to Table
4, Column 4) even with the less-prolific premiums. If we separate
wine grapes into common and premium varieties, the change is even
- 10 -
more striking (refer to table 5). Incidentally, premium varieties
are defined as grapes.* that merit being bottled as varietals and
so Zinfandel and Petit Sirah, two old standby's in Sonoma County
are included as premiums. In the early 1970's. came the Cabernets
and the Pinot Noirs (refer to Table 6), 4140 acres of these two
varietals alone in 1973! The color change hits one, too. In 1959,
white premiums weren't even mentioned in the report. But by 1973,
there were 3083 non-bearing acres in four top white varietials
alone: Gewurztraminer , Chardonnay, Johannisberg Riesling, and
Sauvignon Blanc (refer to Table 6). And last year, non-bearing
acreage of those grapes came to 2896 acres, for a total of 10,854
acres of these four white varieties. Consumption figures bear this
out. Remember the famous white wine boom of the mid-70 's?
In 1970, reds accounted for 50% of the table wine sold versus about
25% for whites; in 1980, reds had dropped to 27% versus 53% for
whites! In 1976, white table wine sales in the United States
exceeded sales of red table wines for the first time in history.
Of course, in the more sophisticated high end of the market, --
fine Cabernets, Gamays , Pinot Noirs -- red wines will always hold
their own. But what excites me is that the mass of American wine
drinkers is regaining its palate.
It took us over 50 years — from 1919 to 1970 — to get back
to the consumption patterns that prevailed before Prohibition (refer
to Table 2 and Chart 2). And it's taken us the 14 years since to
improve upon them. From Table 2 and Chart 2, it is easily seen
that from 1970 to 1983 total wine consumption in the United States
doubled due to the almost tripled use of table and 'sparkling wines.
Today, dry table wines outnumber sweet dessert wines on retailers'
shelves and on customers' dinner tables by almost 9 to 1, and
- 11 -
sparkling wines are making an unprecedented showing. Sonoma County
winemaking has really taken off in the last five years -- we have
110 of 600 wineries in the state and all but one bottle their own
wine. The days of bulk only producers are gone. Sonoma wineries
have the most modern facilities for crushing, fermenting and
storing, and grapes are a larger part -of Sonoma 's agricultural
economy than ever before. As shown in Table 7, the value of Sonoma
County's grapes increased by a factor of 25 from 1948 to 1983 -
significant by any standard of growth.
I might add, we also have some of the best winemakers in
California. In fact, two of the very best are sharing this very
table with me this morning, Dick Arrowood of Chateau St. Jean and
Zelma Long of Simi.
As the public has moved way from its taste for sweetness,
we winemakers have moved away from the big tannin and acid levels
once needed to balance all that sugar. Now we are bringing
different styles of wine to the market, but always within the
framework of what the consumer wants: balance and palatability .
At the same time, we're educating the consumers. How did
they learn what varietals were? They learned by drinking wines
with a distinctive varietal character, as we were making in the
late 70' s. Now they're graduating to wines with more subtleties.
With the proliferation of varietals and appellations, each with
distinctive characteristics to impart to wine, we have the privilege
of creating wine with more style and nuance of character than ever
before. But we also have a responsibility to the consumer.
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163
i
Our sales and marketing efforts must show consumers how to appreciate
these differences. After all, if we don't show the consumer the
comparative value of our product, how can we compete with the
imports? We have to wear two hats — making sound wines, but
remembering marketing considerations too. In other words, winemakers
must follow consumer wishes and at the same time, give consumers
direction.
The pattern is established. Sonoma is reclaiming its rightful
place in California winemaking. Let's not forget the Pedroncellis ,
the Sebastianis, the Foppianos, Seghesios, Martinis, and Pratis,
as well as my own family and all those others whose perseverance
helped lay the foundation for making good wine here in Sonoma County.
Without their efforts, we wouldn't be talking about the
nuances of American versus French oak and other subtleties of wine-
making that consume our thoughts today. One has to wonder why people
stayed in this crazy business. I asked my father that question
once, and I suspect many of us share his reason: "Because," he said,
"that's what my father taught me, and it's all I know."
But the crown of quality is ours again. I hope everyone here
today will join me in celebrating our regained heritage, and
dedicating ourselves to keeping its luster bright. Thank you.
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164
LIST OF TABLES
1. Number of California/Sonoma wineries 1920-1983
2. Consumption by Category 1918-1983
3. Sonoma Grape Acreage related to Price per Ton 1933-1960
(Includes Yield Per Acre)
4. Sonoma Grape Acreage (Bearing and Non-Bearing) related
to Price per Ton 1961-1983 (Includes Yield Per Acre)
5. Premium vs. Common Grapes 1948/1983 (Blacks and Whites)
6. Grape Acreage by Selected Premium Varieties
7. Value of Grapes in Sonoma 's Agricultural Economy
165
TABLE 1
NUMBER OF BONDED WINERIES:
CALIFORNIA
[ 1920
700
[ 1925
565
Z f 1926
483
2 [ 1927
EH
422
2 t 1928
373
3 [ 1929
O
325
gj I 1930
273
[ 1931
251
[ 1933 TO 380 BY YEAR END
160
1938
541
1943
408
1948
375*
1953
344
1958
417
1963
237
1968
234
1973
278
1978
416
1983
606
SONOMA
256 ]
141* ]
120* ]
105* J§
93* ] 5
00
81 ]«
58* ]o
62* ]
25* ]
98
81*
75*
56
48
32
26
36
68
110
* ESTIMATED FIGURES
166
TABLE 2
U.S. WINE
CONSUMPTION:
BREAKDOWN BY
CATEGORIES
(Millions
of Gallons)
1914-1918
TABLE
DESSERT
% TABLE/
% DES3ERT
STILL
TOTAL SPARKLING
29.5
18.9
61/39
48.4 1
1948-1950
35.8
110.0
24/76
145.8 1.5
1963-1965
(A)
69.6
107.8
39/61
177.4
U969
(C)
119.9
( 8 )
100.0
( 12 )
55/45
219.9 16.1
1970
(B)
149.8
( 17 }
93.4
( 12 )
61/39
245.2 22.1
1974
243.7
( 52 )
85.9
( 10 )
74/26
329.9 19.8
980
384.8
( 26 )
63.2
( 10 )
81/19
448.0 29.9
*83
420.4
( 18 )
56.8
( 11 )
88/12
477.2 43.4
1968 Table Wine Sales Exceeded Desserts
1976 White Wine Sales Exceeded Red Table
Numbers in parentheses shows sales special
natural wines included in figures above.
TABLE 3 167
SONOMA GRAPE ACREAGE
AND
PRICES PER TON
1933 - 1960
YEAR
BEARING
ACREAGE
YIELD
PER ACRE
PRICE
PER TON
1933
20,383
.81
$ 34.82
1934
21.500
1.97
15.00
1935
20,000*
10.43
1936
19,192
1.15
20.00
1937
19,859
1.76
22.00
1938
20,499
1.85
12.00
1939
20,950
1.50
16.00
1940
21,125
2.16
20.00
1941
21,370
1.66
27.50
1942
21,670
2.02
34.50
1943
23,453
1.90
87.24
1944
21,750
1.66
125.00
1945
21,958
1.81
71.68
1946
22,879
2.00
124.17
1947
22,704
1.50
35.00
1948
16,064
2.36
39.05
1949
16,277
1.79
42.90
1950
15,849
1.13
83.75
1951
14,772
2.16
55.00
1952
13,463
1.97
40.00
1953
11,689
2.39
41.79
1954
11,351
2.51
48.51
1955
11. 168
2.90
49.14
1956
11,057
3.30
52.77
1957
11,380
2.31
53.86
1958
11,262
2.98
59.70
1959
11. 159
2.41
68.00
1960
10.705
2.20
90.00
* ESTIMATED
TABLE 4
•" SONOMA GRAPE ACREAGE
AND
PRICES PER TON
1961 - 1983
YEAR
BEARING
ACRES
NON-BEARING
ACRES
YIELD
PER ACRE
1961
10,625
449
2.23
1962
10.600
603
3.15
1963
10,669
624
2.64
1964
10,770
646
2.44
1965
11,188
863
2.88
1966
11,572
1,171
2.73
1967
11.765
1,049
2.92
1968
12,764
723
2.39
1969
12,579
921
2.37
1970
12,597
1,302
1.50
1971
12,332
2.611
2.83
1972
12,689
4,377
2.25
1973
13.452
5,838
3.17
974
13.798
7,766
3.27
|1975
16,151
8,245
2.46
1976
19,474
5,416
2.02
1977
23,335
1,935
2.02
L978
24,087
2,267 tore
Than
Whites 2.68
Blacks
979
23,898
2,783
3.20
980
23,639
3,737
3.34
981
23,776
4,665
3.39
982
24,746
4,502
4.00
983
25,541
4,632
3.14
PRICE
PER TON
$135.00
96. 10
96.70
136.67
107.20
102.49
112.00
132.97
166.29
255.70 (
342.97
455. 12
508.00
272.02
238.94
339.80
453.23
473.43
455.95
506.48
590.34
564.87
542.56
) First year average grape price in Sonoma County
was over $200/ton
169
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171
TABLE 7
IMPORTANCE OF GRAPE-GROWING TO SONOMA AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY
Sonoma County
1919 - 1983
1919
.923
928
933
938
GRAPE TOTAL FRUIT % of TOTAL TOTAL FRUIT, GRAPE
TOTAL CROP {, NUT CROP VALUE IN NUT & VEGE- ACREAGE
VALUE VALUE GRAPES TABLE DROP
(x $1000) (x $1000) ACREAGE
65,701 16,307
65,880 17,150
68,641 20,000
66,685 20,383
72,603 20,499
% OF TOTAL
IN GRAPES
24%
26%
29%
30%
28%
943
--
—
—
73,
466
23,
453
32%
948
1,
484
6,
770
21
.9%
76,
654
22,
704
29%
953
1,
170
10,
078
11
.6%
45,
401
11,
689
26%
958
2,
006
llr
728
17
.1%
42,
604
11,
262
26%
9*1
2,
723
11,
121
24
.5%
42,
382
10,
685
25%
968
4,
057
21,
805
18
.6%
45,
511
12,
764
28%
373
21
,692
39,
427
55
.0%
34,
055
9,
685
28%
?78
30
,574
47,
368
64
.5%
42,
665
24,
087
56%
)B3
43
,514
54,
603
79
.7%
41,
016
23,
776
58%
43.5/1.5 = 25 Value grape crop in 1983 was 25 times
value in 1948
172
W
•
LIST OF CHARTS
1. Number bonded wineries in Sonoma County
and in California
2. Sonoma grape acreage vs. price/ton
1933-1960
3. Sonoma grape acreage vs. price/ton
1961-1983
4. U.S. wine consumption by category
IN
:73
US,
350
200
50
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CHART #4
176
i
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-(,00
0
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r
•ts,
177
ISC WINES OF CALIFORNIA, INC.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Richard McCombs
FROM: E. A. Rossi, Jr.
RE: History of Winemaking on Sonoma County
DATE: October 31. 1984
Attached is the final draft of my presentation as a panel
member at the recent Sonoma County Harvest Fair. It
is entitled "A Historical Perspective on Sonoma County
Winemaking. "
I hope you enjoy reading it. You may wish to pass it
around.
E. A. Rossi, Jr,
EAR/vl
Attachment
cc : Judy Gollan ] Copy enclosed for people
Scott Stoner ] interested at Asti.
LIST OF CHAIRMEN OF TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
M. W. Turbovsky - July 15, 19^2 - August 18,
Harold W. Berg - August 19, lykk - April 26, 19^6
Joseph S. Vercelli - April 27, 19^6 - February 28,
Charles M. Crawford - March 1, 19^7 - March 2, 19^8
W. E. Kite - March 3, 19^8 - March 7, 1950
E. M. Brown - March 8, 1950 - March 3, 1952
Max Goldman - March U, 1952 - March 8, 1954
E. C. Skofis - March 9, 195^ - February 20, 1956
Charles B. Holden - February 21, 1956 - May 13, 1957
Philip Posson - May lU, 1957 - May 26, 1958
Myron S. Nightingale - May 27, 1958 - May 25, 1959
Ze'ev Kalperin - May 26, 1959 - May 23, I960
M. J. Bo - May 2U, I960 - May 25, 196l
William V. LaRosa - May 26, 1961 - May 28, 1962
Hans Warkentin - May 29, 1962 - June 3, 1963
E. A. Rossi, Jr. - June U, 1963 - May 28, 196U
Leo A. Berti - May 29, 196U - June 7, 1965
John Hoffman - June 8, 1965 - June 9, 1966
Dawson Wright - June 10, 1966 - June 8, 1967
Raul T. DeSoto - June 9, 1967 - June 6, 1968
Alfred F. Pirrone - June 7, 1968 - June 9, 1969
Ron Hanson - June 10, 1969 - June 8, 1970
M. S. Nury - June 9, 1970 - June lU, 1971
Hector Castro - June 15, 1971 - June 8, 1972
Roy Mineau - June 9, 1972 - June U, 1973
Wine Institute Technical Advisory Committee dissolved June U, 1973
179
INDEX -- Edmund A. Rossi, Jr.
accounting methods, 20, 21
aging, 99, 100
alcohol potentian in grapes, 32, 33
Algeria, 5
Aligretti, Joe, 20, 86
Alioto, Joe, 90
Allied Grape Growers, 28, 38, 39,
97, 98, 104, 107-109, 119-122,
120-123
124, 130
Almaden Vineyards, 35, 90, 117, 121
American Chemical Society, 142, 143
American Journal of Enology and
Viticulture. 138, 139
American Society for Enology and
Viticulture, 25, 133-137
American Society of Brewing
Chemists, 135
American Society of Enologists , 19,
25, 91, 136-138 see also American
Society for Enology and
Viticulture
Amerine, Maynard A. , 2, 45, 99, 137.
Anderson Valley, 18
Aneelo Petri. S. S., 77-81, 91, 92
Angioni, Ed, 84
Arakelian, Krikor, 28, 93
Arrowood, Dick, 87
Asher, Randy, 89
Astibrand, 38
Asti Grape Products Company, 6, 7,
26
Asti winery, 6, 7, 11-13, 22, 38,
43, 74, 76, 81, 112, 114, 131,
138
Baldwin, Guy, 25
Balfe, Tom, 20
Beaulieu Vineyard, 71, 120
Bechtel Engineering, 137
Beverage Source, The, 28, 90, 122,
123, 131, 132
Bianchini, Lelio "Bob," 36, 76, 77,
87, 99, 112
Bierwirth, John, 35
blending, 44-46
Bondio, Al Dal, 99
Bonner, Chris, 89
Bonomo, Victor, 107
Brandt, George Henry, 11
brandy, 27, 28, -93-96
Brandy Advisory Board, 92
Brown, Elbert M. , 17, 18, 22, 28,
32-34
Brown, Ron, 87
Caire, Justinian, 8
Calabrese, Joe, 84
California Department of Food and
Agriculture, 108
California Growers, 121, 131
California Wine Association, 5, 6,
21, 93
Carbone, bottler, 55
Cash, Lyman , 16
Castor, John G. , 3
Cella, John B. , II, 89, 97, 98
Cella family, 29, 98
Cella Vineyards, 29, 97, 98
Chao, Hsia, 114
Charmat process for champagne -
making, 137
Chavez, Cesar, 107
Clovis winery (La Paloma) , 12, 26,
41, 95, 106, 131
Cole, Ansley, Jr., 3
Colony brand, 109-111, 116, 126,
127, 132
Community Winery, 28, 97
cooperage , 100
Coppo, Bartolomeo, 6, 7, 24
Coppo, Joe, 6
Coppo, Louis, 6
Cora, Piero, 143, 144
Cotranch, Irving, 84
Crawford, Charles M. , 135
Creekside Cellars brand, 132
180
Daniel, John, Jr., 29, 76, 98, 99
Davies, Jack, 3
Davis, Douglas, 20, 86
Davitto, Bernard, 17, 23, 24, 34,
56
Deane, John R. , 17, 20, 22-24, 34
Delsarto, Robert, 86, 87
Deuer, George, 100
Di Giorgio, Joseph, Sr., 12-14
Digardi, Ernest, 25
distillation, 16, 94-96
pot still, 3, 95, 96
Downs, Edgar "Pete," 87
Dreyer Winery [Brazil] , 117
earthquake of 1906, 4
Eddy, Thomas G. , 87
Eisenberg, Ted, 117
Enunart, John, 84
Enocianina, 114, 115
ERLY Industries, 28, 101, 121, 122,
123
Early California olives, 122,
131
Escalon winery, 36, 38, 81, 123
Filipello, Ferrer, 59, 87, 113
fining, 100, 101
Fischel, Clair, 37
Fonseca family, 11
Ford, Ken, 89
Forestville winery, 38
Fountaingrove label, 8
Fresno mold, 136
Fresno State College [University] ,
19, 66
Furek, Bob, 107
Gallo, Ernest and Julio, 35, 82
Gallo winery, 28, 29, 31, 41, 61,
135
Gambarelli & Davitto, 55, 56, 110
Gambarelli, Victoria, 55, 56
Card, Art, 93
Gerzerske, R. , 123
Giordano, Ray, 17, 34
Golden Gate International Exposition
of 1939, 128, 129
Goldman, Max, 88
Gomberg, Louis R. 37
Gott, Jim, 25, 36, 87
Grand Metropolitan PLC, 29, 121
grapes, purchasing of, 38-40, 62,
70, 104-106, 108, 141
Grillez, Antonio, 11
Guymon, James F. , 3
Hahn, Gregg, 87
Haigh, Isabelle, 128
Halperin, Ze'ev, 25, 88
Halpern, Paul, 87, 89
Hanley, Richard, 90
Hansen's juices, 123
harvesting, 96
Harvey's Bristol Cream, 107
Heck, Adolph, 35
Heck, Paul, 20, 28, 86
Heitz, Joseph, 25
Heritage Colony label, 71
Heublein, Inc . ,
Federal Trade Commission suit,
106-108
international operations, 116-
122
ownership and acquisitions, 28-
30, 101, 104, 106, 119-122
packaging, 73
plants, 104
products, 30, 73, 102
high-proof, 93-96
Hinckle, Richard Paul, 144, 145
Holden, Charles, 19, 25, 135
Holloway, W. "Pete," 90
Holstein, Kerek, 87
Hubach test, 18
Huber, Paul, 93
Inglenook Vineyards, 52, 69-73, 98-
101, 120
Navalle label, 69, 70, 73, 120,
126
Institute of Food Technologists,
142, 143
inventory control, 23
181
Italian Swiss Colony, 5, 6, 11-13,
21 , passim
Asti labels, 17
brands, 27-30, 97, passim
corporate culture, 28-30
labels, 27, 40, 124
"little old winemaker" image,
110, 111, 127, 128
marketing nationwide, 55, 110
ownership, 13-16, 26-29, 34-41,
119, 120, 122
personnel, 84-91
plants, Escalon, Madera, Asti,
Sanger, 86-91
see also plant names
research and development, 87,
90, 123
sale to ERLY Industries, 122
sale to Louis Petri, 34-41
sale to National Distillers, 13-
16
varietals, introduction of, 73
Iwata, Adrienne, 89
Jones, Lee, 27, 29
Joseph W. Ciatti Company, 26
Joslyn, Maynard, 25
Kakiuchi, Harley, 88
Karakasevic, Miles, 3, 88
Kay, George, 87
Keller, John, 107, 123
Kew, Ken, 25
Knowles, Legh, 71
Knox, Richard, 84
Krum, Phil, 89
Kutschinski, Jim, 90
Kwok, Hon Kong, 90, 113
Lancers winery, 11, 107, 118, 131,
132
Larkmead winery, 85
Lejon products ,
brandy, 28
cask wines , 71
champagne, 28
dry vermouth, 28
soft wines, 72, 73
sweet vermouth, 28
Leong, Tommy, 36, 37, 88
Lohr, Jerry, 66
Lodi plant, 95, 123, 131
Lutz, Greg, 84
Madera plant, 93, 104-106, 120, 121
marketing, 124-128, 131, 132
Martin, Remy, 3
Martini, Elmo, 7
Martini, Louis M. , 15, 16
Martini & Prati, 7, 8
Matasek, William, 89
Me Comb s , Richard, 123
McFarland, Bill, 122, 131
McGuire, Kevin, 87, 88
Mclnturf, Robert, 108, 109, 120,
124, 130
McManus, James 0., 92
McManus, James R. , 92
Merle, A.J. , 6, 14
Mineau, Roy, 136
Mission Bell winery (at Madera) ,
28, 38, 41, 74, 75, 81, 114, 115,
120, 121
Monier, John, 87
Moody, Ed, 88
Mortara, Benjamin, 36, 77
Murphy, Gerald, 122, 123, 131
Nagle, Charles W. , 114
Nakagawa, Gary, 89
Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino label, 54, 57
Napa Valley as wine producing area,
99, 100
National Distillers Corporation,
12-21, 24, 25, 27, 32-35, 97
Ng, George, 126
Nightingale, Myron, 20, 25, 86
Nino, Ron, 89
North Coast Cellars label, 132
O'Connell, J. , 99
Offut, Ed, 38
Ohanesian, Aram, 25, 89
Okino, Min, 86, 90
182
Oliver!, John, 36
Olmo, Harold P. , 105
Oster, Dick, 107
Overby, Russ, 20
Paolucci, Ray, 88, 89
Petri, Angelo, 37,38
Petri, Louis, 28, 34-41, 77, 85,
91, 92, 93, 109, 112, 137
Petri Grapevine. 37
Pike, Bob, 87
Posson, Phil, 101
Powers, Jack, 107, 117, 130
Prati, Ed, 86
Prati, Enrico, 6, 7, 14, 17, 18,
21, 22, 34, 126
product development, 17, 41-46, 52-
75, 102, 103, 112, 113, 116
production, 34
Prohibition, 6, 15, 26
quality control, 81-83, 92, 93
R.J. Reynolds, 28, 107, 119, 121
research and development, 18, 41-
46, 52-75, 74-76, 112-116, 139-
143
Rife, Rob, 87
Riverside Wine and Cheese
Exposition, 144, 145
Robirds, Frank, 59, 87, 113
Rossi, Albina, 13
Rossi, Beatrice, 13
Rossi, Edmund A., Jr.
awards 143-145
becomes vice president, 98
childhood and education, 1-3
family, 8-10, 13, 14
joins National Distillers, 17
public relations work, 75
Rossi, Edmund A. Sr., 5-8, 13-16,
20, 21, 37, 38, 126, 133
Rossi, Eleanor, 13
Rossi, Esther, 13
Rossi, Father Carlo, 8,9
Rossi, Joe, 89
Rossi, Pietro C. , 3-5
Rossi, Richard, 9, 10
Rossi, Robert, 77, 90, 91
Rossi, Robert D. , 5-9, 14, 20, 21,
77
Rossi family, 9, 10, 13
Roullard, Joe, 88
sales of wineries, 28
Salles, Bob, 26
Sanbongi, Kasuo, 89
Sanders, Bob, 107
Sanger winery, 131
Santa Fe brands, 97
Sbarboro, Alfred, 1, 4, 6, 14, 20
Sbarbaro brand, 132
Sbarboro family, 1. 6, 14
Seghesio family, 6, 21, 24, 26
Shelley, Lloyd, 36
Shewan- Jones Winery, 12, 27, 28, 97
Shrickhande, Anil, 114
Sierra Wine Company, 121, 123, 124,
131
Silk, Bertram, 88, 113
Sirai Winery, 128
Singleton, Vernon L. , 89
Siphert, Ira, 18, 34
Skofis, Elie, 20
Smirnoff Vodka, 121
Solari, Bruno C. (Larry), 17, 22,
34, 69, 84, 85, 107
Sonoma County as wine producing
area, 99, 100
Sonoma County Winegrowers'
Association, 136
Souverain Cellars, 132
Spatola, bottler, 55
Steimiller, Bob, 99
Stillman, Joe, 25
Stockley, Tom, 132
Stoner, Scott, 87
sugar, residual, 49
Tan, Peter, 90, 113, 114
Tarpey, Paul, 26, 106
Thoukis, George, 87
Tomlinson, Frank, 36
Toomey, C. , 84
Twight, Edwin, 37
183
Underwood, Frank, 36
United Vintners, 28, 29, 71, 104,
105, 107, 120
University of California, Berkeley,
25
University of California, Davis, 2
25
Vandevert, Vince , 84
Vercelli, Joe, 86
Vigna, Gian Piero, 143
W.A. Taylor Winery, 7
Wallerstein Laboratory
Communications . 19, 135
Watson, Stuart, 116
Weber, Bill, 90
Weeks, Bruce, 88
Wente , Ernest, 68
Wiesenbeck, Jack, 36
Wine Institute, Technical Advisory
Committee, 133, 134
winemaking, 19, passim
wines
coolers, 64-67
dessert, 11, 12, 19, 110
flavored, 30, 31, 41, 48, 52-70,
102
generic, 47-51
low-alcohol, no-alcohol, 66
red, 48-50, 67, 142
sensory evaluation, 82, 83, 99,
102, 103, 128
shipping of, 77-80, 91-93
soft, 72-75
sparkling, 56
table, 39, 47-51, 103, 104
white, 49, 50, 103, 104, 142
Winkler, Albert J. , 2
Witsky, Bill, 88
Woodward, Robert, 84
Yamata, Ted, 93
Yocum, Martin D. , 90
Zimmerman, Herb, 87, 113
Grape Varieties Mentioned in the
Interview
Alicante Bouschet, 115
Cabernet Sauvignon, 40
Chardonnay , 40
Concord, 56
Carignane, 40, 48, 51
French Colombard, 94
Golden Chasselas, 40
Johannisberg Riesling, 40
Lambrusco, 71, 72, 115
Mission, 72, 94, 95
Muscat, 66
Periquita, 118, 140
Petite Sirah, 48
Pinot noir, 48
Royalty, 72
Rubired, 72
Ruby Cabernet, 105
Sangiovese, 51
Sauvignon vert, 40
Thompson Seedless, 33, 48, 94, 95
Tokay, 94, 95
Trebbiano, 51, 96, 116
Ugni blanc, 96
Zinfandel, 40, 48, 51
Wines Mentioned in the Interview
After Hours, 64
Americano, 143
Annie Greensprings line, 103, 113
Annie Greensprings Apricot
Splash, 63
Annie Greensprings Berry Frost,
63
Annie Greensprings Cherry, 63
Annie Greensprings Peach Creek,
63
Annie Greensprings Plum Hollow,
63
Arriba, 53
Asti Spumante, 66
Bali Hai, 53, 56, 63, 65, 102, l.J
blanc de blanc, 74
blush wines , 67
Boone's Farm wines (Gallo) , 63, 113
184
Borsalino, 71
burgundy, 40, 54
Cabernet Sauvlgnan, 117
California Tipo Red, 50, 51
California Tipo White, 50. 51, 126,
127
chablis, 47, 68
champagne (sparkling wines), 28,
44, 56, 118, 132, 137
Chardonnay, 117
Chateau Lejon red, 28
Chateau Lejon white, 28
Chianti, 50, 51
chianti, 50, 51, 56, 57
Chilled Light Burgundy, 71, 116
claret, 54
Cold Duck, 56, 57
Collins, 53, 57
Cuba Libre, 53, 57
Easy Nights, 64
Eden Roc, 53
Fiore de California, 40
flor sherry, 101
Golden Spur, 53
Gray Riesling, 68
Grenache, 74
Gypsy Rose, 53
Hombre, 53
Jacare, 73, 120
Key Largo, 63
Magic Moments, 64
Mellow Days, 64
Paree, 56
Pastoso burgundy, 40
Periquita, 118, 119
port, 61
Red Showboat, 53
red vino, 49
Rhineskeller, 56
Rhythm, 53
rose, 67
Sangrole, 63
Satin Rose, 53
sauterne, 47
sherry, 12
Silver Satin, 31
Swizzle, 56
Tipo chianti, 50, 51
T.J. Swann wines, 64
Thunderbird, 31, 41,
Tipo Red chianti, 40
vermouth, 12, 18, 57
Vin Cafe, 53
Waikiki Duck. 63
White Zinfandel, 67
Zapple, 63
Zinfandel, 5, 48, 51, 54
Zombie, 53, 57 .
113
53, 61
125-127
Silver Satin with
Stepping Out, 64
Sweet Vino, 54
Swiss Up, 53, 58,
53, 56, 60, 61
Bitter Lemon, 53
59
Ruth Teiser
Born in Portland, Oregon; came to the Bay
Area in 1932 and has lived here ever since.
Stanford University, B.A., M.A. in English;
further graduate work in Western history.
Newspaper and magazine writer in San Francisco
since 1943, writing on local history and
business and social life of the Bay Area.
Book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle,
1943-1974.
Co-author of Winemaking in California, a
history, 1982.
An interviewer-editor in the Regional Oral
History Office since 1965.
Lisa S. Jacobson
Born in San Francisco. B.A. cum laude , Pomona College, majoring
in history; studied at Oxford University. Experience in market
research and museum research.
Editorial assistant and alumni news editor, Public Affairs
Office, Pomona College.
Research manager, interviewer, editor, and writer with private
oral history organization, specializing in business history.
Since 1986, researcher, interviewer, and editor with Regional
Oral History Office, in fields of business history, wine
industry, and social history.
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